1. Message of The Upanisads Swami Ranganathananda Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (MS)

The

Message

of

the

Upaniṣads

SWAMI

RANGANATHANANDA

Ex. Kexxa hm

10-8-92

W-3/C-17, Prasantr Nily'n

THE MESSAGE

OF

THE UPANIṢADS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

(Published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

1. Four Volumes of Eternal Values for a Changing Society

Vol. I : Philosophy and Spirituality

Vol. II : Great Spiritual Teachers

Vol. III : Education for Human Excellence

Vol. IV : Democracy for Total Human Fulfilment

2. A Pilgrim Looks at the World : Vol. I

3. A Pilgrim Looks at the World : Vol. II

4. Science and Spirituality

5. The Call of Human Excellence

6. Bhavan's Eternal Values Booklets Series :

7. Swami Vivekananda on Guru Gobind Singh

8. Children : Humanity's Greatest Assets

9. Role and Responsibility of Teachers in Building up Modern India

10. Neurology and What Lies Beyond

11. Swami Vivekananda's Vision of Free India

THE MESSAGE

OF

THE UPANISADS

AN EXPOSITION OF THE UPANIṢADS

IN THE LIGHT OF

MODERN THOUGHT AND MODERN NEEDS

SWAMI RANGANATHANANDA

A. S. Kesar singh W-3/c-17, pratapli Nilkayam 10-8-92

1990

BHARATIYA VIDYA BHAVAN

Kulapati Munshi Marg

Bombay 400 007

All Rights Reserved

by

The General Secretary, Ramakrishna Math, P.O. Belur Math

District Howrah, West Bengal, India

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research,

criticism, or review, no portion may be reproduced in any form without

the written permission of the Publishers.

The low pricing of this book has been made possible due to generous

contributions made by lovers and admirers of Vedanta in the West and East,

particularly from Europe, U.S.A., and Australia, through

Swami Ranganathananda.

Price : Rs. 50/-

(This book is not to be sold at any price higher than Rs. 50/- in India,

Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka)

First Edition : 1968 : .... 3500 Copies

Second Edition : 1971 : .... 5000 Copies

Third Edition : 1980 : .... 2000 Copies

Fourth Edition : 1985 : .... 4000 Copies

Fifth Edition : 1987 : .... 3300 Copies

Sixth Edition : 1990 : .... 3000 Copies

PRINTED IN INDIA

By K. V. Gopalakrishnan at Associated Advertisers & Printers,

505, Tardeo, Arthur Road, Bombay-400 034 and Published by

S. Ramakrishnan, Executive Secretary, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,

Bombay-400 007.

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS

We are happy to place before our readers this important book, The Message of the Upaniṣads, by Swami Ranganathananda. The lectures comprising the book were originally delivered by the Swami at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta, of which he was then the Secretary. Excepting the first lecture entitled 'The Charm and Power of the Upaniṣads', which forms the 'Introduction' to the book, all the rest were given as weekly Saturday evening lectures in the Vivekananda Hall of the Institute between May 2, 1962 and January 19, 1963. After completing the study of the three Upaniṣads, Iśā, Kena and Kaṭha, which form the theme of the present book, the Swami continued these series of weekly lectures, taking up the Gītā for a similar verse by verse exposition.

As in Rangoon, Karachi, and Delhi earlier, so in Calcutta, these weekly lectures of Swami Ranganathananda attracted an intelligent overflow audience, including a large number of young people. Starting with about a thousand at the opening lecture on May 2, 1962, attendance steadily rose to over sixteen hundred as the weeks passed. The nature of the theme as much as its treatment by the speaker and his mode of delivery helped to hold the attention, and sustain the interest and enthusiasm, of so vast and varied an audience, which represented a cross-section of the cosmopolitan population of the city of Calcutta and its environs.

The lectures, which were delivered extempore, were tape-recorded, and later appeared, after thorough editing by the Swami, in the Institute's monthly Bulletin between August 1962 and August 1966 under the general title 'Our Spiritual Heritage'.

'The Charm and Power of the Upaniṣads' was a lecture which the Swami delivered at the Institute's School of Humanistic and Cultural Studies on September 17, 1966, and which appeared in the Bulletin for October 1966.

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANISADS

We are thankful to Swami Kirtidananda of the Ramakrishna Mission, Madras, for preparing the index of this book. We are also grateful to Shri Nimai Kumar Mukherjee, Sub-Editor, Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta, for his devoted help in going through the proofs.

We have planned to bring out in the near future a fresh enlarged edition of the author's Eternal Values for a Changing Society, incorporating in it also several of his speeches and writings subsequent to 1958.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

The Bhavan is happy to bring out a third edition of the book The Message of the Upanisads by Swami Ranganatha- nanda. The fact that it has gone into three editions testifies to the esteem in which the reading public holds it both for its contents and lucidity of exposition.

Readers will be interested to know that the subject of the book was a matter of detailed discussion between Sir Julian Huxley, the noted biologist and humanist, and the learned author. The correspondence exchanged between them in this regard forms Appendix II entitled 'Vedanta and Modern Science' which has been placed at the end of the book.

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

As per the Announcement in the pre-publication offer made by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, in its Bhavan's Journal, the fourth edition of this book The Message of the Upanisads by Swami Ranganathananda is now being brought out at a subsidized price of Rs. 25 per copy. The low pricing of this book has been made possible by generous contributions, through Swami Ranganathananda, from lovers and admirers of Vedanta in the West and the East, particularly from Europe, USA, and America. We are beholden to them all.

Normally, this book will have to be priced at Rs. 105, looking to the present cost of production and Rs. 95 as the cost of the Third Edition. As mentioned in the pre-publication offer, the scheme was to make available all the four volumes of Eternal Values for a Changing Society and The Message of the Upanisads at a total pre-publication price of Rs. 105 and post-publication price of Rs. 125. Accordingly, the fourth edition of this book is being priced at Rs. 25, as also each of the four volumes of Eternal Values for a Changing Society. We are also glad to announce that the Swami's two other books: A Pilgrim Looks at the World, Volumes One and Two, are also being brought out, Second Edition, at the subsidized price of Rs. 25 for each, thanks to the generous contributions of Vedānta devotees in East and West, particularly in Europe, U.S.A., and Australia.

—PUBLISHERS

HINTS ON TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION

In the book, Devanāgari characters are transliterated according to the scheme adopted by the International Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912 and since then generally acknowledged to be the only rational and satisfactory one. In it the inconsistency, irregularity, and redundancy of English spelling are ruled out: f, q, w, x, and z are not called to use; one fixed value is given to each letter. According to this scheme:

a stands for अ and sounds like o in come

ā " " आ " " " a " far

i " " इ " " " i " bit

ī " " ई " " " ee " feel

u " " उ " " " u " full

ū " " ऊ " " " oo " cool

ṛ " " ऋ " may be pronounced like ri in ring

ḷ " " ऌ " sounds like a in cake

ai " " ऐ " " " i " mite

o " " ओ " " " o " note

au " " औ " " " ou " count

ṁ " " अं (anusvāra) and sounds like m in some

ḥ " " अः (visarga), " " soft, half h

' (apostrophe) stands for s (elided अ ( अ) )

k stands for क and sounds like k

kh " " ख " " " kh in silk-hat (uttered quickly together)

g " " ग " " " g " go

gh " " घ " " " gh " log-hut

ṅ " " ङ " " " ng " sing

c " " च " " " ch " church

ch " " छ " " " ch in church-hill

j stands for ज and sounds like j in jug

jh " " झ " " " dgeh " hedgehog

ñ " " ञ " " " n " singe

t " " ट " " " t " cut

vīf

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANISADS

th " " उ " " " th " hot-house

d " " द " " " d " bird

dh " " ढ " " " dh " red-hot

ṇ " " ण (cerebral n) " bond

t " " त " " t soft as in French

th " " थ " " th " thunder

d " " द " " " th " though

dh " " ध " " " th " breathe-hard

n " " न " " " n " pen

p " " प " " " p " pun

ph " " फ " " " ph " top-hat

b " " ब " " " b " bat

bh " " भ " " " bh " abhor

m " " म " " " m " man

y " " य " " " y " young

r " " र " " " r " rust

l " " ल " " " l " lump

v " " व " " " v " levy

ś " " श (palatal s) " ship

ṣ " " ष " " sh " should

s " " स " " " s " sun

h " " ह " " " h " home

The following points may also be noted:

(1) All Sanskrit words, except when they are proper nouns,

or have come into common use in English, or represent a class of

literature, cult, sect, or school of thought, are italicized.

(2) Anglicized Sanskrit words like 'kärmic', 'saṁsāric',

'Arhathood', etc. are romanized.

(3) Current geographical names, except in cases where their

Sanskrit forms are given, or in special cases where the context

requires it, and all modern names from the commencement of the

nineteenth century are given in their usual spelling and without

diacritical marks.

CONTENTS

Page

Publishers' Preface

v

Hints on Transliteration and Pronunciation

1X

Introduction: The Charm and Power of the Upaniṣads.

The Principal Upaniṣads—From Obscurity to Prominence—What the Upaniṣads contain—Satyasya Satyam—Inquiry into the 'Within' of Nature—Science and Religion—Śruti versus Smṛti—Sanātana Dharma: Its Uniqueness—Meaning of the Term 'Upaniṣad'—Truth versus Opinion—The Mental Climate of the Upaniṣads—The Upaniṣads and Indian Culture—The Upaniṣads and Western Christianity —The Upaniṣads and Indian Christianity—The Upaniṣads and Indian Islam—The Upaniṣads and Indian Secularism—The Upaniṣads and the Ideological Struggle—The Upaniṣads and the Modern Crisis—Lead Kindly Light.

1. Our Spiritual Heritage

The Challenge of Human Experience—The True Nature of Man—The Moving Power of the Spirit—The Need for broad-based Education—A Message of Fearlessness—Universal Man.

46

2. Īśā Upaniṣad—1

What is this World?—Beyond Time and Space—Striving for Fulfilment—The Dangers of Stagnation—Seek and Ye Shall Find—The Technique of Enjoyment.

62

3. Īśā Upaniṣad—2

Zest in Life—Joyful Old Age—Coming to Grips with Life—A Warning.

81

4. Īśā Upaniṣad—3

Space-Time Continuum—Faster than the Mind—Tat Tvam Asi—Entering the Profound—Correcting the Error of Separateness—Practical Application.

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

5. Iṣā Upaniṣad—4

True Nobility—The ‘Universe Souls’—Theory to Flow into Practice—Renunciation and Service—Education as Assimilation of Ideas—Man-Making and Character-building Education—The Synthesis of All Experience—The Self and the Not-Self—Being and Becoming—Worldliness and Other-Worldliness—Samyagjñāna or the Philosophy of Total Vision—The Nitya and the Līlā—Perfection Here and Now.

6. Iṣā Upaniṣad—5

Strength Through Education—Work is Worship—Dharma and Amṛta—The Synthesis of Character and Vision—Prayer for Divine Revelation—Reality and Its Symbol—Facing Death in a Grand Manner—Death as a Creative Crisis—Vedāntic Jivanmukti—Prayer for Passage to Heaven—The Indian Fear of Rebirth—The Vedāntic Message of Fearlessness—True Spirituality—Birth in a Punyabhūmi.

7. Kena Upaniṣad—1

The Critical Approach in Philosophy—The Critical Approach in Religion—The Spiritual Urge—The Inadequacy of Knowledge from ‘Without’—The Importance of the Knowledge from ‘Within’—The Unification of All Experience—The Grip of the Inner World on the Indian Mind—The King of Sciences—The Monotheistic God in the Light of the ‘King of Sciences’—The Unity of Brahman and Ātman—Prayer for Strength and Light.

8. Kena Upaniṣad—2

The Pure Mind—The Discipline of Mind in Science—The Discipline of Mind in Vedānta—The Power of Discipline—From Manliness to Godliness—The Search for the Highest.

9. Kena Upaniṣad—3

The Nature of Reality—The Spiritual Character of the Absolute—Conceptual God versus True God—Pitfalls in the Path—Cautiousness of Statement—The Nature of Brahman-Realization—The Continuity

CONTENTS

of the Indian Spiritual Tradition–Totapuri and Sri

Ramakrishna–The Fruit of Wisdom Is Strength.

10. Kena Upaniṣad–4

Footprints of the Atman on the Sands of Experience

–Scholarship versus Spirituality–Realization Here

and Now–Universality of Vision–The Evolutionary

Vision–From Knowledge to Wisdom–The Spiritual

Training of the Will–The Direction of Human Evo-

lution–The Dynamics of Human Evolution–The

Uniqueness of Man–The Place of the Ego in the

Strategy of Evolution–The true Life for Man–Im-

mortality.

11. Kena Upaniṣad–5

A Fascinating Story–The Grace of Knowledge–

Unity of Microcosm and Macrocosm–Hints and

Suggestions–Ethical Basis of Spirituality–An In-

finite Personality.

12. Kaṭha Upaniṣad–1

Education as Illumination–The Science of the Soul–

Śraddhā–Fearless Love of Truth.

13. Kaṭha Upaniṣad–2

The First Two Boons–A Question Fraught with

Great Blessings–Temptations Refused.

14. Kaṭha Upaniṣad–3

The Paths of Śreya and Preya–Abhyudaya and

Niḥśreyasa–The Yogakṣema Mood–Vidyā and Avi-

dyā–Yama's Eulogy of Naciketā.

15. Kaṭha Upaniṣad–4

The Vedāntic Concept of Education–The Blind Lead-

ing the Blind–The Delusion of Wealth–The Tyran-

ny of the Sensate–True Humanness–Lower Self and

Higher Self–The Vedāntic View of Evolution–The

Self of Man Indestructible–‘All Expansion Is Life;

All Contraction Is Death’–Modern Knowledge and

Sri Ramakrishna's Wisdom–Wisdom versus Scho-

larship.

xi

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

16. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—5

Science and the Non-physical Aspects of Experience

—The Fruits of such a Study—The Main Theme of

Vedānta: The Immortal Self of Man—Limitations of

Logical Reason—Wonderful the Teacher—Extraordi-

nary the Student—The Aim of Teacher-Student

Communion: Illumination—The Unfathomable Na-

ture of Spiritual Illumination—The Transcendence of

Logical Reason—Logical Reasnn versus Philosophical

Reason—Naciketa's Will to Truth—The Extraordi-

nary Nature of Vivekānanda's Discipleship under

Ramakrishna.

17. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—6

Limitations of Logical Reason: How and Why? Ve-

dānta Upholds Reason—Reason in Classical Physics

—Reason in Twentieth-century Physics—Reason in

Modern Science versus Reason in Western Philoso-

phy—Modern Scientific Reason versus Vedāntic Rea-

son—Scientific Reason versus the Prejudices of Scien-

tists—Reason in Twentieth-Century Biology—Reason

in Modern Depth Psychology—The New Dimensions

of Scientific Reason—The Development of Scientific

Reason into Philosophical Reason—The Function of

Philosophical Reason as understood in Vedānta.

18. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—7

The Resolute Spiritual Will of Naciketā—Worldly

Achievements versus Spirituality—The Journey

Outward and the Journey Inward—The Spiritual

Utility of the Outward Journey—Achievement versus

Personality—The Way of the Spiritually Gifted—

Naciketā's Spirit of Renunciation—The Soil is Ready

for the Seed.

19. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—8

The Characteristics of the Self—The Quest of the

Self—The Imagery of the Two Birds—Dharma and

Amṛta—The Marvellous Touch of the Soul—Positi-

vism versus Religion—Man in Quest of Bliss—The

House of Truth is Wide Open for Naciketā.

20. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—9

Māyā a Fact of Existence—Beyond Māyā—Om: the Symbol of Total Reality—The Power of Tapas.

21. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—10

Man Viewed in Depth—The Message of Hope—The Nature of the Ātman—The True Glory of Man—The Self-Revelation of the Ātman—Grace versus Personal Effort—Man's Struggle to Become God-Worthy—The Fruit of Spirituality Is Fearlessness.

381

22. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—11

The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You—Life Is a Journey to Fulfilment—The Imagery of the Chariot—Two Types of Journey—The Meaning of the Chariot Imagery—The Emancipation of Buddhi or Reason—Life under the Guidance of Buddhi—Life Itself Is Religion—Human Life: Its Uniqueness—Sanity in Spiritual Life—Freedom Is the Birthright of All.

397

23. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—12

Light on the Path—The Need for Inner Penetration—Vedānta on the Inner layers of the Universe—Modern Science on the Inner Layers of the Universe—Nature: Differentiated versus Undifferentiated—The Concept of Personality—Limitations of Personality—The Impersonal behind the Personal—The Inner Layers as Kośas—The Changeless behind the Changing—The Purification of Reason—The Advaitic Vision—Its Impact on Religion—Man: the Perennial Theme of Vedānta.

413

24. Kaṭha Upaniṣad—13

The 'Imprisoned Splendour'—The Splendour Can be Released—The Pre-eminence of Adhyātma Vidyā—Yoga as the Science and Art of the Spiritual Life—Jñāna Yoga: The Awesome Yet Fascinating Path—Arise, Awake, O Man!—The Philosophy of Spiritual Awakening—The Need for a Teacher—The Vedāntic Concern for Man—Diving to the Depth—The Conquest of Death—The Spiritual Basis of Character-Development—In Praise of Wisdom.

430

25. Kaṭha Upaniṣad-14

The Divergent Paths of Death and Deathlessness—The Phenomenon of Awareness—Human Immaturity versus Maturity—Equipping Reason for the Higher Life—The Direct Technique of the 'Study of the Book Within'—India and the 'Science of Human Possibilities'—The Self: Lower versus Higher—Homeostasis and Evolution—Emergence of the Higher Mind—The Way of the Dhīra—The Dhīra of the Upaniṣads—the Dhīra: The Modern Courageous Type—The Philosophy of Total Experience—The Avrttacakṣu—The Senses Conceal More Than They Reveal—Concentration of Mind—Buddha: A Glowing Example—Blessedness: the Fruit of the Science of Religion.

26. Kaṭha Upaniṣad-15

The Many in the Light of the One—Fearlessness—The Footprints of the Ātman in Experience—The Non-difference of Cause and Effect—Evolution Pre-supposes Involution—Unity of Matter and Energy—Vision of Unity in Diversity—Three Types of Knowledge—The Evils of Separateness in Religion—Emergence of the Unifying Vision in Religion in the Modern Age—The Indian Heritage of this Unifying Vision—Emergence of this Unifying Vision in Human Relations in the Modern Age—Training the Mind in this Unifying Vision—The Use of Symbols in Meditation—The Glory of this Unifying Vision.

27. Kaṭha Upaniṣad-16

The City of the Unborn—The Uniqueness of Man—The Unity of Consciousness—The Ātman: the Integrating Principle in Man—Immortal Ātman and Mortal Man—Karma and Rebirth—Brahman Revealed in Experience—Unity in Diversity—Realization—The Light of All Lights—The Vision Sublime.

28. Kaṭha Upaniṣad-17

The Sacredness of Trees in Indian Culture—Its Philosophical Orientation—The Tree of Existence: Scandinavian—The 'Tree of Existence: Indian—The Uni-

queness of the Aśvattha Imagery—The Tree Imagery

and the Philosophy of Reality—Being and Becom-

ing—Brahman and Sakti Inseparable—The Vedāntic

Vision of Reality: Its Immense Sweep—Śaṅkara's

Vision of the World-tree—Life: True and False—

Brahman as Cosmic Order—Brahman Is to Be Rea-

lized Here and Now—The Concept of Planes of Exis-

tence—The Supreme Excellence of the Human

Plane.

29. Katha Upaniṣad—18

Spiritual Realization and Its Utility—Rising from

Knowledge to Wisdom—‘Seek Ye the Infinite’—Land-

marks on the Spiritual Journey—The Technique of

Yoga—Need for Alertness—Yoga: the Highest State

of Existence—Homeostasis and Evolution—Charac-

teristics of Homeostasis—Homeostasis versus Yoga—

Characteristics of Yoga—Existence as the Ultimate

Category—Realization Here and Now—Man: Mortal

versus Immortal—The Central Message of Vedānta.

Appendix One: Text of the three Upaniṣads in Devānāgari

Script.

Appendix Two: Vedānta and Modern Science (Correspond-

ence between Sir Julian Huxley and Swami Ranga-

nathananda on The Message of the Upaniṣads).

Index:

INTRODUCTION

THE CHARM AND POWER OF THE UPANISADS

The Message of the Upanisads is a study, verse by verse, of three of the principal Upanisads, namely, Isā, Kena, and Katha. The first contains eighteen, the second thirty-five, and the third one hundred and nineteen verses. Though constituting a small portion of the total Upanisadic literature, they yet contain a lucid exposition of all the essential ideas of this immortal literature.

Scholars are divided as to the date of the composition of the Upanisads. Many of them are agreed, however, that most of the principal Upanisads belong to the period prior to the advent of Buddha in the seventh century before Christ. There are over two hundred Upanisads, many of them sectarian in character and palpably post-Buddhistic and even post-Sankarācārya.

The Principal Upanisads

The principal Upanisads are accepted to be those which Sankarācārya (A.D. 788-820) chose to comment upon; they are ten in number and are enumerated in the Indian tradition as follows: Isā, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Mundaka, Māndukya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Chāndogya, and Brhadāranyaka.

According to some scholars, Sankara also commented on an eleventh Upanisad, the Svetāsvatara. In his commentary on the Brahma-Sūtra, he refers to four more, namely, Kausitaki, Jābāla, Mahānārāyana, and Paiṅgala.

The Isā Upanisad embodies in its very opening verse the central theme of all the Upanisads, namely, the spiritual unity and solidarity of all existence.

The Kena illumines the nature of knowledge by pointing out the eternal knower behind all acts of knowing, and purifies man's concept of ultimate reality of all touch of finitude and relativity by revealing its character as the eternal Self of man and the Self of the universe.

The Katha holds a special fascination for all students of the Upanisads for its happy blend of charming poetry, deep mysticism, and profound philosophy; it contains a more unified exposition of M.U.-1.

Vedānta than any other single Upaniṣad; its charm is heightened by the two characters of its dialogue, namely, old Yama, the teacher, and young Naciketā, the student.

The Prasna, as its name implies, is an Upaniṣad of questions; each of its six chapters comprises a question asked by each of a group of six inquiring students on various aspects of Vedānta, and the answers given by their teacher, the sage Pippalāda.

The Munḍaka, after classifying all knowledge into parā, higher, and aparā, lower, and describing all science, art, literature, politics, and economics—in fact, all positive knowledge, the knowledge of the changeful many—as aparā, and boldly including even the holy Vedas and all sacred books in this category, proclaims that one knowledge as parā 'by which the imperishable changeless reality (of the One behind the many) is realized'. And the Upaniṣad sings in ecstasy the glorious vision of the One in the many.

In the brief compass of its twelve verses of condensed thought, the Māndūkya surveys the whole of experience through a study of the three states of waking, dream, and dreamless sleep, and reveals the Ātman, the true Self of man, the Turīya or the Fourth, as it puts it, as pure consciousness, eternal and non-dual. It proclaims in its second verse the infinite dimension of man in a pregnant utterance—one of the four mahāvākyas or 'great utterances' of the Upaniṣads: ayam ātmā brahma—‘This Ātman (Self of man) is Brahman.'

The Taittirīya, after majestically proclaiming that 'the knower of Brahman attains the Supreme': Brahmavidāpnoti param, describes the five kośas or sheaths that enclose and hide Brahman, and demonstrates the technique of piercing these sheaths of relativity and finitude with a view to reaching the infinite and the eternal at the core of experience. It also provides a scientific definition of Brahman as 'That from which all these beings are born, by which, after being born, they live, and into which they merge when they cease to be'.

The Aitareya establishes the spiritual character of the Absolute through a discussion of the nature of the Self of man, and proclaims this truth in another of the four mahāvākyas (V. 3): Pra-jñānam brahma—‘Brahman is pure Consciousness.’

The Chāndogya introduces us to charming truth-seekers like Satyakāma, Svetaketu, and Nārada, and outstanding spiritual

teachers like Āruṇi, Sanatkumāra, and Prajāpati. Through several

illuminating teacher-student dialogues, the Upaniṣad helps us to

discriminate the reality of being from the appearance of becoming.

In a brief utterance of deep spiritual and philosophical import,

treated as another of the four mahāvākyas, it sings in refrain the

divinity of man: tat tvam asi—‘That thou art.’ It prescribes a

knowledge of this innate divinity of man as the one remedy for

the deeper ills of life (VI. 8. 7): tarati śokam ātmavit—‘The knower

of the Ātman crosses all sorrow.’ In its profoundly human episode of

the discipleship of Indra under Prajāpati, it instructs us in the true

nature and technique of man’s spiritual quest and the blessings

that flow from spirituality. It is an impressive account of man’s

spiritual education, his growth from worldliness to spirituality. It

points out the limitations of materialism as a philosophy of life and

the evils that flow from it.

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka, the longest of the Upaniṣads, is, as its

name implies, a big (bṛhat) forest (araṇya) of philosophical

thought and spiritual inspiration. Four outstanding personalities

illumine its pages—two men and two women—Janaka, the philosopher-king, Yājñavalkya, the philosopher-sage, Maitreyī, the deeply

spiritual wife of Yājñavalkya, and Gārgī, the vācaknavī, the ‘gifted

woman speaker and philosopher’, who is foremost among the questioners of Yājñavalkya in philosophical debate. The Upaniṣad majestically expounds, through its fascinating dialogues conducted by

these outstanding and other lesser personalities, the central theme

of all the Upaniṣads, namely, the divinity of man and the spiritual

solidarity of the whole universe in Brahman. It contains another

of the four mahāvākyas (I.4.10), namely, aham brahmāsmi—‘I am

Braḥman’, besides the āyām ātmā brahma of the Māṇḍūkya already

referred to. It dares to characterize Brahman as ‘the fearless’, and

presents its realization by man as the attainment, here and now,

of the state of absolute fearlessness and fullness of delight.

From Obscurity to Prominence

It goes to the eternal credit of Śaṅkara that, through his

masterly commentaries on the principal Upaniṣads, he brought out

of obscurity this immortal literature, as also the great Bhagavad-Gītā, and made them accessible and intelligible to a wider audience;

and that audience has been steadily widening ever since, aided by

until, in the present age, thanks to the techniques of modern

western civilization, the whole world has become its actual or po-

tential audience. Apart from the great western orientalists, whose

translations and expositions brought this and other books of the

Indian tradition to the attention of scholars in East and West, it

was from Swami Vivekananda, the most authentic voice of

Vedānta in the modern age, that vast masses of men and women

in both the hemispheres became drawn to the spiritual charm and

rational strength of this literature and to a recognition of its rel-

evance to man in the modern age. In his lecture on 'Vedānta

Works, Vol. III, Eighth Edition, pp. 237-38):

'Strength, strength is what the Upaniṣads speak to me from

every page. This is the one great thing to remember, it has been

the one great lesson I have been taught in my life. Strength, it

says, strength, O man, be not weak. Are there no human weak-

nesses?-says man. There are, say the Upaniṣads, but will more

weakness heal them, would you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will

sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness.... Ay, it is the only litera-

ture in the world where you find the word abhīḥ 'fearless', used

again and again; in no other scripture in the world is this adjective

applied either to God or to man.... And the Upaniṣads are the great

mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the

whole world. The whole world can be vivified, made strong, ener-

gized through them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the

weak, the miserable, and the down-trodden of all races, all creeds,

all sects, to stand on their feet and be free. Freedom--physical

freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom--are the watch-

words of the Upaniṣads.'

Śaṅkara's commentaries on these Upaniṣads, especially on those

of their passages pregnant with philosophical and spiritual import,

are masterpieces of philosophical discussion illumined by deep spiri-

tual insights. His masterly handling of the Sanskrit language in

these commentaries gives us a prose which is marked by brevity

and vigour, simplicity and poetic charm.

What the Upaniṣads Contain

In the Upaniṣads, we get an intelligible body of verified and

verifiable spiritual insights mixed with a mass of myths and leg-

ends and cosmological speculations relating to the nature and

origin of the universe. While the former has universal validity,

and has a claim on human intelligence in all ages, the latter for-

swears all such claim. All positivistic knowledge contained in any

literature, including religious literature, is limited and conditioned

by the level of contemporary scientific knowledge. Modification,

and even scrapping, of much of this knowledge due to subsequent

advances has affected the truth-validity of much of man's literary

heritage, including his religious and philosophical ones.

The spiritual insights of the Upaniṣads, however, are an ex-

ception to this tyranny of time. Subsequent scientific advances

have not only not affected their truth-value but have, on the con-

trary, only helped to reveal the rational basis of their insights and

enhance their spiritual appeal. This is no wonder, because these

insights are the products of an equally scientific investigation into

a different field of experience, namely, the world of man's inner

life.

Satyasya Satyam

By sheer speculation on the meaning of the facts of the external

world, the Vedic thinkers had earlier arrived at a unitary concep-

tion of the universe, at a materialistic monism, through their con-

cepts of avyakta, indeterminate nature, or prāṇa, cosmic energy.

But the culminating point of their discoveries was the spiritual

unification of all experience in the Ātman or Brahman: Brahmaivēdamin visvamidaṁ variṣṭham—‘All this manifested universe is

verily Brahman the Supreme’ (Muṇḍaka, II. 2. 12); idaṁ sarvain

yadayam ātmā—‘All this (manifested universe) is this Ātman’

(Bṛhadāraṇyaka, II. 4. 6); and tai etat brahma apūrvam anaparam

anantaram abāhyam, ayam ātmā brahma sarvānubhūḥ—‘This Brah-

man is without a prior or a posterior, without interior or exterior,

this Ātman is Brahman, the experiencer of everything’ (ibid., II.

5. 19).

If everything is the Atman or Brahman, the universe of name

and form cannot be an illusion. The Upaniṣads consider it as māyā;

but this does not mean illusion. Māyā is a mere statement of fact,

what we are and what we see around us. It refers to the inner

contradictions involved in our experience of the world and in our

knowledge of it. These contradictions will remain, say the Upani-

ṣads, so long as we remain at the sensate level, so long as we fail

to take into account the Atman, the Self behind the not-Self, the

One behind the many. Yet, all our experiences and knowledge in

the sphere of māyā are experiences and knowledge of the Ātman,

coming through the sense-organs. Hence they are not illusory, but

true. Man travels, says Swami Vivekananda, not from error to

truth, but from truth to truth, from truth that is lower to truth

that is higher. Hence the Upaniṣads describe the world of the not-

Self as 'truth' and the Self or Ātman as 'The Truth of truth'. This

is conveyed in a 'significant passage of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (II. 1. 20):

Tasyopanisat satyasya satyamiti; prāṇā vai satyam; teṣām eṣa

satyam—'Its (Ātman's) intimate name is "the Truth of truth"; the

cosmic energy (prāṇa) is, verily, truth; and This (the Ātman) is the

truth of that.'

Elucidating this Vedāntic idea, Swami Vivekananda says (Com-

plete Works, Vol. V, Seventh Edition, p. 272):

'There is really no difference between matter, mind, and Spirit.

They are only different phases of experiencing the One. This very

world is seen by the five senses as matter, by the very wicked as

hell, by the good as heaven, and by the perfect as God.'

Inquiry into the 'Within' of Nature

Pointing out the reason for this change in the field of search

from the external to the internal, which occurred in ancient India,

and its significance for human thought, Swami Vivekananda says

(ibid., Vol. III, Eighth Edition, pp. 330-31):

'Just as the Greek mind, or the modern European mind, wants

to find the solution of life and of all the sacred problems of being

by searching into the external world, so also did our forefathers;

and just as the Europeans failed, they failed also. But the western

people never made a move more, they remained there; they failed

in the search for the solution of the great problems of life and death

in the external world, and there they remained stranded. Our fore-

fathers also found it impossible, but were bolder in declaring the

utter helplessness of the senses to find the solution. Nowhere else

was the answer better put than in the Upaniṣads: yato vāco nivaṛ-

tante aprāmuṅ manasā saha—"From whence words, unable to reach,

come back reflected, together with the mind" (Taittirīya, II. 4); na

tatra cakṣurgacchati na vāggacchati—"There the eye cannot go,

nor can speech reach" (Kena, I. 3). There are various sentences

which declare the utter helplessness of the senses, but they did not

stop there; they fell back upon the internal nature of man, they

went to get the answer from their own soul, they became introspec-

tive; they gave up external nature as a failure, as nothing could be

done there, as no hope, no answer, could be found; they discovered

that dull, dead matter would not give them truth, and they fell back

upon the shining soul of man, and there the answer was found.'

Posing the question how the West, which has undoubtedly

been in the forefront of advance in several fields of knowledge from

the time of the Greeks, could lag behind India in this field of in-

quiry these thousands of years, Professor Max Müller answers (Three Lectures on the Vedānta Philosophy, London, 1894, p. 7):

'But if it seems strange to you that the old Indian philosophers should have known more about the soul than Greek or medieval or modern philosophers, let us remember that however much the telescopes for observing the stars of heaven have been improved, the observatories of the soul have remained much the same.'

Science and Religion

All science is the search for unity. Vedānta discovered this unity in the Ātman; it followed its own method relevant to this field of inquiry. But it illustrated its conclusions with whatever positive knowledge was available at the time. In recent centuries this knowledge has been advanced radically and vastly by modern science, the impact of which on Vedānta, however, has been most wholesome. In fact, Vedānta hopes for and welcomes further radical advances in modern science by which its own spiritual vision of the One in the many may be corroborated by positive scientific knowledge, so that the spirituality of science and the spirituality of religion may flow as a united stream to fertilize all aspects of human life. Referring to this fact and hope in his 'Paper on Hinduism' read at the Chicago Parliament of Religions on 19 September 1893, Swami Vivekananda says (Complete Works, Vol. I, Eleventh Edition, p. 15):

'All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.'

Vedānta is thus both religion and philosophy. As religion, it discovers the truths of the inner world, and fosters the same discovery by others; and as philosophy, it synthesizes this science of the inner world with the other sciences of the outer world, to present a unified vision of total reality, and to impart to human life and character depth of faith and vision along with breadth of outlook and sympathy.

Religion, according to Vedānta, is supersensual knowledge; it is not supernatural, but only supersensual. Vedānta does not speak of any supernatural revelation. What lies within the sphere of the senses is not the concern of religion; nor has it the competence for it, says Vedānta, for that is the field of the positive sciences,

8

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

the verdict of which will always hold in this field in preference to

the verdict of religion. 'Not even by a hundred statements of the

Śruti (body of supersensual knowledge, or scripture), can fire be-

come cold', says Śaṅkara, because it goes against what has been

ascertained by sense experience and positive knowledge. On the

other hand, the positive sciences have no authority in the super-

sensual field of experience. They overreach themselves when they

pronounce judgements on subjects like soul and God; they may,

and often are, competent to provide hints and suggestions; but the

inquiry itself is the concern of another science, the science of re-

ligion. Clarifying the position of these two types of sciences, Swami

Vivekananda says (Complete Works, Vol. VI, Sixth Edition, p. 81):

'Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world just as

chemistry and the other natural sciences deal with the truth of

the physical world. The book one must read to learn chemistry is

the book of (external) nature. The book from which to learn re-

ligion is your own mind and heart. The sage is often ignorant of

physical science because he reads the wrong book—the book within;

and the scientist is too often ignorant of religion, because he,

too, reads the wrong book—the book without.'

Śruti versus Smṛti

The Upaniṣads are an impressive record of this 'reading of

the book within'. The scriptures of every religion are such records.

But all of them, except the Upaniṣads, contain also a good bit of

extraneous matter, not only myths and legends and cosmological

theories, which the Upaniṣads also contain, but also a large number

of rules and regulations, with their do's and don'ts, to guide the

individual and collective conduct and behaviour of their respective

followers. The significance of these latter being merely local and

temporary, they are not capable of universal application and are

not relevant for all time; the fundamental message of all religions,

however, derive from their central core of essential spiritual truths

which are universal and for all time. The Upaniṣads are the only

sacred books which addressed themselves exclusively to the dis-

covery of these essential spiritual truths and to leading man, irre-

spective of creed and race, to their realization in his own life. Indian

tradition refers to the Upaniṣads, therefore, as Śruti, as contrasted

with another class of religious literature known as Smṛti, including

the Dharma Śāstra, to which it wisely left the work of forging social

rules and regulations in the past, as it would leave it to the political

constitutions and social consciences today. To the category of the

INTRODUCTION

9

Smṛti also belong the sacred books of all the historical religions, which derive their origin and authority from a personal founder. Thus, among India's sacred books, the Gītā, the Māhābhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa, and all the Purāṇas are classed as Smṛtis, besides Manu-smṛti, Yājñavalkya-smṛti, and similar other books of Hindu law. Excepting the Upaniṣads, all other scriptures of religions, in India and outside, contain a mixture of Śruti and Smṛti contents in varying proportions. That is why the Upaniṣads are treated as the one Śruti par excellence.

The Sanātana Dharma: Its Uniqueness

This explains the very high authority and prestige of the Śruti in the Indian tradition; it derives from the verified and verifiable character of its truths and their universality. Accordingly, the Smṛti is always subordinate to the Śruti in spiritual matters. Smṛtis come and go; they change age after age; but the Śruti, according to Śaṅkara (commentary on the Brahma-Sūtra, I.1.2), contains vastutantrajñāna, 'knowledge of reality as it is', whereas Smṛti contains puruṣatantrajñāna, 'knowledge depending on the person', which 'can be modified or altered by human effort': kartum akartum anyathākartum śakyate. A Smṛti that sustained society in one age may choke it in another age. As socio-economic conditions change, laws and regulations need to be recast and reinterpreted. Otherwise, they result in strangling the social organism. If the bark that protects the tree fails to grow and expand along with the growth of the tree, it will choke the tree; and if it is a living tree, it will shed that bark and grow a new living bark for itself. Regarding all Smṛtis in general, Ramakrishna's pithy utterance correctly conveys the Indian idea: 'Mughal coins have no currency under the (East India) Company's rule.'

Much of the irrelevance of the world's religious traditions today proceeds from their inability to separate the Śruti, or the essential, from the Smṛti, or the obsolete, contents, the eternal spiritual truths from the historical socio-political dogmas, in these traditions, and their unwillingness to throw overboard the latter which have ceased to have any currency value in the changed conditions, and their incapacity to forge new Smṛtis in response to the new demands. Referring to this, the mathematician-philosopher, A.N. Whitehead says (Science in the Modern World, p. 234):

'Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal,

but the expression of those principles requires continual development.'

Historian Arnold Toynbee also stresses this point in his book,

An Historian's Approach to Religion (pp. 262-64):

"Thus, in oïr society in our time, the task of winnowing the

chaff away from the grain in mankind's religious heritage is being

forced upon us by a conjunction of social and spiritual circum-

stances....

'In the life of all higher religions, the task of winnowing is a

perennial one because their historic harvest is not pure grain. In

the heritage of each of the higher religions, we are aware of the

presence of two kinds of ingredients. There are essential counsels

and truths, and there are non-essential practices and propositions.

'The essential counsels and truths are valid at all times and

places, as far as we can see through the dark glass of mankind's

experience up to date....

'But at the same time these same higher religions are historical

institutions; and they have been making a transit through space-

time in which, at every point-moment in their trajectory, they have

been encountering the local and temporary circumstances of hu-

man life....

'These accidental accretions are the price that the permanently

and universally valid essence of a higher religion has to pay for

communicating its message to the members of a particular society

in a particular stage of this society's history.'

The philosophy and religion that India developed out of the

Śruti bears, therefore, a significant title, namely, sanātana dharma,

'Eternal Religion'. It derives its authority from its truth-character

and not from any person, be he a saint or even an incarnation; and

the truth-character of a teaching demands that it be verifiable by all,

irrespective of dogma, creed, and race, and at all times. It has,

however, a high place for saints and incarnations as exemplars and

teachers of the eternal truths of religion, and for the promulgators

of social laws and regulations, be they holy or gifted individuals,

as in the past, or institutions like the national legislatures or inter-

national organizations, as in the present.

Throwing light on this unique characteristic of the Sanātana

Dharma as derived from the Upaniṣads, Swami Vivekananda says

in his lecture on 'The Sages of India' (Complete Works, Vol. III,

pp. 248-51):

'Two ideals of truth are in our scriptures; the one is what we

call the eternal, and the other is not so authoritative, yet binding

under particular circumstances, times, and places. The eternal re-

lations between souls and God are embodied in what we call the

Śrutis, the Vedas. The next set of truths is what we call the

Smṛtis, as embodied in the words of Manu, Yājñavalkya, and

other writers, and also in the Purāṇas, down to the Tantras....

'Another peculiarity is that these Śrutis have many sages as

the recorders of the truths in them, mostly men, even some women.

Very little is known of their personalities, the dates of their birth,

and so forth, but their best thoughts, their best discoveries, I should

say, are preserved there, embodied in the sacred literature of our

country, the Vedas. In the Smṛtis, on the other hand, personalities

are more in evidence. Startling, gigantic, impressive, world-mov-

ing persons stand before us, as it were, for the first time, sometimes

of more magnitude even than their teachings.

'This is a peculiarity which we have to understand—that our

religion preaches an Impersonal-Personal God. It preaches any

amount of impersonal laws plus any amount of personality; but

the very fountain-head of our religion is in the Śrutis, the Vedas,

which are perfectly impersonal; the persons all come in the Smṛtis

and Purāṇas—the great avatāras, incarnations of God, prophets, and

so forth. And this ought also to be observed that, except our re-

ligion, every other religion in the world depends upon the life or

upon the life of some personal founder or founders. Christianity

is built upon the life of Jesus Christ, Mohammedanism upon Mohammed,

Buddhism upon Buddha, Jainism upon the Jinas, and so on. It

naturally follows that there must be in all these religions a good

deal of fight about what they call the historical evidences of these

great personalities. If at any time the historical evidences about

the existence of these personages in ancient times become weak,

the whole building of the religion tumbles down and is broken

to pieces. We escaped this fate, because our religion is not based

on persons but principles. That you obey your religion is not be-

cause it came through the authority of a sage, no, not even of an

incarnation. Kṛṣṇa is not the authority of the Vedas, but the

Vedas are the authority of Kṛṣṇa himself. His glory is that he is

the greatest preacher of the Vedas that ever existed. So with the

other incarnations; so with all our sages.'

By Śruti is generally meant the Vedas; specifically, it means the

Upaniṣads, they being the Vedānta, the anta, literally the end or

concluding portion, but in a deeper sense, the very gist or essence,

of the Vedas. The Vedas or Śrutis expound sanātana dharma, which

means eternal religion. Indian spiritual tradition holds the Vedas

as anādi, beginningless. Clarifying this idea in his address at the

Parliament of Religions, Chicago, Swami Vivekananda says (ibid.,

Vol. I, pp. 6-7):

'It may sound ludicrous to this audience how a book can be

without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant.

They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered

by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravi-

tation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity

forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world.

The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul,

and between individual spirits and the father of all spirits, were

there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot

them.

'The discoverers of these laws are called ṛṣis (sages), and we

honour them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience

that some of the very greatest of them were women.'

Meaning of the Term 'Upaniṣad'

That this is the traditional view is evident from what Śaṅkara

says on the etymology of the term 'Upaniṣad'. The term means

knowledge received by the student 'sitting close to' the teacher.

Explaining the derivation of the term in the introduction to his

commentary on the Katha Upaniṣad, Śaṅkara says:

Kena paraṁrarthayogena upaniṣacchabdena vidyā ucyate, itiu-

cyate. Ye mumukṣavo drṣṭānśravikaviṣayavitṛṣṇāḥ santaḥ upani-

ṣacchabdavācyāṁ vakṣyamānalakṣaṇāṁ vidyāṁ upasadya, upaga-

mya, tanniṣṭhatayā niścayena śīlayanti, teṣāṁ avidyādeḥ saṁsāra-

bijasya viśaraṇāt, hiṁsaṅāt, vināśanāt ityanena arthayogena vidyā

upaniṣadityucyate—

'By what etymological process does the term upaniṣad denote

knowledge? This is now explained. Those who seek liberation,

being endowed with the spirit of dispassion towards all sense ob-

jects, seen or heard of, and approaching this knowledge indicated

by the term upaniṣad presently to be explained, devote them-

selves to it with one-pointed determination—of such people, this

knowledge removes, shatters, or destroys the avidyā (ignorance or

spiritual blindness), which is the seed of all relative existence or

worldliness. By these etymological connexions, upaniṣad is said

to mean knowledge.'

And anticipating a possible objection, Śaṅkara continues:

Naṁu ca upaniṣacchabdena adhyetāro granthamapi abhilapanti,

upaniṣadam adhīmahe, upaniṣadam adhyāpayāma iti ca. Naiṣa

doṣaḥ; avidyādi saṁsārahetuviṣaraṇādeḥ sadidhātvarthasya grantha-

mātre asaṁbhavāt, vidyāyāṁ ca saṁbhavāt, granthasyāpi tādarth-

yena tacchabdātmopapatteḥ, āgumaiḥ gṛhyam ityādiṣu. Tasmāt

vidyāyāṁ mukhyayā vrttyā upaniṣacchabdo vartate, grantha tu bhaktyā iti—

'It may be urged that students use the term "upanisad" even to denote a book, as when they say "We shall study the Upanisad", "We shall teach the Upanisad". This is no fault; since the destruction etc. of the seed of worldliness, which is the meaning of the root sad (in upa-ni-sad), cannot be had from a mere book, but can be had from knowledge, even the book may also be denoted by that term, because it serves the same purpose (indirectly), as when we say that "clarified butter is verily life". Therefore, the term "upanisad" primarily refers to knowledge, and only secondarily to a book.'

Education involving the student 'sitting close to' the teacher means the most intimate student-teacher communion. The higher the knowledge sought, greater is this communion and greater the silence accompanying the knowledge-communication. These values reach their maximum when the knowledge that is sought and imparted is of the highest kind, namely, ātmajñāna or brahmajñāna, knowledge of the Ātman or Brahman, which, as Sankara points out in his commentary on the Brahma-Sūtra (I. 1. 2): anubhavāvasānatvāt bhūtavastuvisayatvāt ca brahmajñānasyā—'finds its consummation in experience (or realization), since the knowledge of Brahman relates to a reality which is already existing'.

Truth versus Opinion

One ot the fascinating features of the Upanisads is love of truth and its fearless quest. Referring to this, Robert Ernest Hume says in his book The Thirteen Principal Upanisads (p. 30, footnote):

'The earnestness of the search for truth is one of the delightful and commendable features of the Upanisads.'

In them we are always in the company of earnest students and teachers who discuss the central problems of all philosophy and religion with a sincerity and thoroughness, objectivity and detachment, rare in the history of philosophic thought. The Upanisads discovered very early in history what Thomas Huxley refers to as the difference between opinion and truth, between 'I believe such and such' and 'I believe such and such to be true.' Says Huxley (quoted by J. Arthur Thomson in his Introduction to Science, p. 22):

'The longer I live, the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man's life is to say and feel, 'I believe such and

14

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

such to be true". All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about that act.'

A belief is true if it has stood, and can always stand, the test of experience, and not because it has been said by a man or written in a book. The essential Vedāntic truths belong to this category; they possess universal validity as they are verifiable by all men. This is forcefully brought out by Saṅkara in a remarkable passage of his commentary on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad dealing with the validity of scriptural statements (I.4.7):

Na vākyasya vastvanvākhyānam kriyānvākhyānam vā prāmāṇyaprāmāṇyakāraṇam. Kim tarhi? Niścitaphalavat vijñā-notpādakatvam. Tat yatra asti, tat pramāṇam vākyam; yatra nāsti, tat apramāṇam—

'The test of the validity of a sentence is not that it just states something about a thing or about an act. What (is it) then? (It is) its capacity to generate certain and fruitful knowledge. A sentence that has this is valid; while one that lacks it is invalid.'

Such truths are far different from the private beliefs of an individual or a group, a sect or a church, held with all emotional intensity and projected for other people's acceptance with equal fervour. Such beliefs cannot claim 'the greatest reward' because they have not paid 'the heaviest penalty' involved in being subjected to the rigorous scrutiny of reason and being thrown open to universal verification. Referring to this unique characteristic of Vedānta, Romain Rolland says (The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel, Third Impression, 1947, p. 196):

'The true Vedāntic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their co-ordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.'

The Mental Climate of the Upaniṣads

I have referred before to the fearless quest of truth characteristic of these Upaniṣads. Any reader of this literature cannot also escape being struck by the rational bent and speculative daring of these sages of ancient India.

The spirit of inquiry which possessed them led them to question experience, to question the environing world; it also led them to fearlessly question their gods and the tenets of their traditional faiths. In this latter field, they showed their uniqueness in contrast to the other gifted people of the ancient world, namely, the Greeks, who did not experience the same urge to subject their religions to that rational investigation which they so diligently and passionately applied to social and political phenomena, and in which their contributions were to become unique and lasting. The Upaniṣadic, and earlier, even the Vedic, sages did not also fear to doubt when rational, certain knowledge was difficult to come by. They illustrate the truth of the creative role of scepticism; in the pursuit of truth, such scepticism is but the prelude to rational faith.

When they sought for the truth of the external universe, they found it baffling; inquiry only deepened the mystery. The Nāsa-dīya-sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda records the impact of this mystery on the ancient Indian mind in language at once fascinating and provoking. That mind discovered early, as modern thinkers are slowly discovering today, that the mystery of the external world will only deepen and not diminish, in spite of advancing knowledge, if the mystery of the inner world of man is not tackled. For a complete philosophy of reality, there is need to have data from both the fields of experience, the outer and the inner.

Modern science has become aware of the influence of the datum of the observer on the knowledge of the observed data. If the self as knower is inextricably involved in the knowledge of the not-self, of the known, an inquiry into the nature of the self and the nature of knowledge becomes not only a valid but also an indispensable and integral part of the scientific investigation into the nature of reality. As remarked by Sir Arthur Eddington (Philosophy of Physical Science, p. 5):

'We have discovered that it is actually an aid in the search for knowledge to understand the nature of the knowledge which we seek.'

The Upaniṣads, therefore, were far in advance of human thought when they decided to dedicate themselves to the tackling of the inner world. By their emphasis on inner penetration, by their whole-hearted advocacy of what the Greeks centuries later promulgated in the dictum 'Man, know thyself', but at which they

themselves stopped half-way, the Upaniṣads not only gave a permanent orientation to Indian culture and thought, but also blazed a trail for all subsequent philosophy in East and West.

The Upaniṣads do not disclose any details as to the personal histories of their thinkers; but they provide us with a glimpse of the working of their minds; we can siudy in this literature the graceful conflict of thought with thought, the emergence of newer and newer thought more satisfactory to reason and more in accord with experience at deeper levels, and the rejection of the less adequate ones without a tear. Hypotheses are advanced and rejected on the touchstone of experience and reason, and not at the dictate of a creed. Thus thought forges ahead to unravel the mystery of man and the universe in which he finds himself; and we can watch this developmental movement of thought and, if we are sensitive enough, also experience, in the words of the Mundaka Upaniṣad (III. 2. 8), this onward march of being carried along in its current to the one ocean of truth and beauty and delight, and realize our oneness with the One behind the many:

Yathā nadyah syandamānā samudre

astam் gacchanti nāmarūpe viḫāya;

Tathā vidvān nāmarūpāt vimuktaḥ

parātparam் puruṣamupaiti divyam—

The Upaniṣads reveal an age characterized by a remarkable ferment, intellectual and spiritual. It is one of those rare ages in human history which have registered distinct break-throughs in man's quest for truth and meaning and which have held far-reaching consequences for all subsequent ages. The mental climate of the Upaniṣads is saturated with a passion for truth and a similar passion for human happiness and welfare. Their thinkers were ‘undisturbed by the thought of there being a public to please or critics to appease’, as Max Müller puts it (Three Lectures on Vedānta Philosophy, p. 39). They considered no sacrifice too heavy in their quest for truth, including not only earthly pleasures and heavenly delights, but also what is most difficult to achieve and what every truth-seeker is called upon to achieve, namely, the

sacrificing of pet opinions and pleasing prejudices. Referring to this characteristic of the Upaniṣads in his book Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, Max Müller says (p. 182):

'It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedānta should have been slowly elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy, as in mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of a Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone after regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but one, as there will be but one in the end, whether we call it Ātman or Brahman.'

An impressive procession of students and teachers, earnest and sincere; a moving record of their animated discussions and graceful thought conflicts here in small groups and there in large assemblies; a flight of thought now and then into sublime heights of experience·recorded in songs of freedom and delight, graceful and direct; an effective use of beautiful metaphors and telling imageries serving as feathers to its arrows of thought in flight; a singular absence of an atmosphere of coercion, open or veiled, secular or sacred, inhibiting the free pursuit of truth or its communication; the constant summons to man to verify for himself the truths placed before him for his acceptance; and the treatment of man as man and not as cut up into creeds, races, and sex—these and other varied features invest the Upaniṣads with the enduring greatness and strength of a perennial philosophy and the beauty and charm of an immortal literature.

Unlike philosophies elsewhere and other systems here, Vedānta is a living philosophy; and from the time it was first expounded in that dim antiquity down to our own times, it has been the spiritual inspiration behind the vast and varied Indian cultural experi­ment.

The Upaniṣads and Indian Culture

Without understanding the Upaniṣads, it is impossible to get an insight into Indian history and culture. Every subsequent develop­ment of philosophy and religion in India has drawn heavily on the Upaniṣads. The path of bhakti or devotion to a personal God, the path of karma or detached action, and the synthesis of all spiritual paths in a comprehensive spirituality, expounded by the Gītā, are

all derived from the Upaniṣads. The Gītā is described as brahma-

vidyāntargata yogaśāstra—‘the science (and technique) of yoga de-

rived from the science of Brahman’. Emphasizing this pervasive

influence of the Upaniṣads on Indian religions, Swami Vivekananda

says (Complete Works, Vol. III. pp. 230-31):

‘In the Upaniṣads, also, we find all the subsequent develop-

ment of Indian religious thought. Sometimes it has been urged

without any grounds whatsoever that there is no ideal of bhakti

in the Upaniṣads. Those that have been students of the Upaniṣads

know that that is not true. There is enough of bhakti in every

Upaniṣad, if you will only seek for it; but many of these ideas

which are found so fully developed in later times in the Purāṇas

and other Smṛtis are only in the germ in the Upaniṣads. The

sketch, the skeleton, was there, as it were. It was filled in in

some of the Purāṇas. But there is not one full-grown Indian ideal

that cannot be traced back to the same source—the Upaniṣads.’

In the words of Bloomfield (The Religion of the Veda, p. 51):

‘There is no important form of Hindu thought, heterodox Bud-

dhism included, which is not rooted in the Upaniṣads.’

Every creative period in India's long history has behind it the

impact of this Vedāntic inspiration in a concentrated measure. The

drying up of this fount of inspiration, similarly, has always seen

the setting in of the low tide of her culture and life. The ages of

the Gītā, Buddha, and Śaṅkara in the past, and of Sri Ramakrishna

and Swami Vivekananda in the present, are such landmarks in

India's ancient and modern history. It is the energy of this strength-

ening and purifying philosophy of Vedānta, coupled with the energy

of modern science and technology, that Swami Vivekananda has

released for recreating India in the modern age. That Vedāntic

energy could not be confined to India only, but has flowed out, first

to the West, and later to the East as well, to recreate the life of

modern man.

The Upaniṣads are thus the perennial spring of strength and

creativity. This creativity and strength derive from their vision

of man as the Ātman,the eternal, infinite dimension of the human

personality. Their theme is freedom of the human spirit and their

message is fearlessness and love and service. They summon men

and women everywhere to this mighty adventure of freedom and

fearlessness, love and service, and to the realization, by each man

or woman, of his or her essential spiritual nature, and the transcend-

ence of the limitations of finitude. They explain every great move-

ment—social, political, or religious—nay, the phenomena of life

itself, as an expression of the urge to freedom inherent in every

organism—the struggle of the Infinite caught up in a cell or in

a body, in a social scheme or a political system, in a religious dogma

or a philosophical creed, in a texture of relations or the network

of relativity itself. Hence their constant summons to man is to wake

up and march on: 'Arise! Awake! and stop not till the goal is

reached!', as conveyed by Swami Vivekananda, adapting the power-

ful words of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad: Uttiṣṭhata jāgrata prāpya varān

nibodhata.

To the Upaniṣads India owes almost all the brighter sides of

her life and culture. To them she owes her impressive record of

active toleration within her borders and the uniformly peaceful and

benevolent nature of her foreign relations in the field of religion.

To them she owes the singular absence of aggressive political and

military policies and programmes on her part towards other nations,

during her millennia of history. To them she owes the periodical

renewal of her national springs of life when they seem all but chok-

ed and about to dry up. To them also she owes the absence of the

heavy hand of an all-powerful church and the tentacles of an in-

escapable dogma on the national life and mind, allowing for the

emergence and unhampered functioning, in succeeding periods, of

free, creative, and universal spirits who came to purify and reactivate

the dormant spirit of the people, who were received by the Indian

people and given divine honours, unlike the hostility and persecu-

tion with which spiritual innovators were, and still are, received

in all Semitic religions in the absence of the blessing of the im-

personal background which the Upaniṣads had provided for the

Indian religions, and whose procession down the ages is an im-

pressive feature of India's long history.

And today she is on the threshold of another such creative era

of history in the wake of an unprecedented new manifestation of

the Vedāntic spirit and energy in Sri Ramakrishna and Swami

Vivekananda—

Sri Ramakrishna, of whom Rabindranath Tagore, in a tribute

paid during Sri Ramakrishna birth centenary in 1937, sang in his

charming Bengali:

Bahu sādhaker bahu sādhanār dhārā

dhāyēc tomar milnā hoyeche tāra;

Tomār jīvane asīmer līlāpathe

nūtan tīrtha rūp nilo e jagate;

Deśvideśer pranām ānila tāni,

sethāi amār pranati dilām āni—

'The diverse courses of spiritual seeking of millions of spiritual seekers-they have all mingled in your meditation;

The limitless expanse of your blessed life has assumed the form of a new tīrtha, place of pilgrimage, in this world;

Which draws the salutations (of seekers) from India and abroad,

To which I add my own salutation';

of whom Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengal's revolutionary Muslim poet, sang:

Mandire masjide girjāy

pūjile brahme samaśraddhāy;

tava nā̀m mākhā prem niketane

bhariyāche tā̀i trisaṁsār—

'Thou didst worship God with equal fervour in temple, mosque, and church, for which reason the whole world is filled with the reservoir of Love that Thou art';

and Swami Vivekananda, about whom Rabindranath Tagore said (Prabāsī, Vol. 28, p. 286):

Ādhunik kāle bhāratavarṣe Vivekananda i ekṭi mahat vāṇī pracār karchilen, seṭi kono ācāra-gata nai. Tini deśer sakalke ḏeke bolechilen, tomāder sakaler madhye brahmer śakti; daridrer madhye devatā tomāder sevā cān. Ei kathāṭi yuvakder cittake samagrabhāve jāgiyece. Tā̀i ei vāṇīr phal deśer sevā āj vicitra-bhāve vicitratāge phaleche. Tār vāṇī mānuṣke jakhani sammann diyece, takhani śakti diyece—

'In recent times in India, it was Vivekananda alone who preached a great message which is not tied to any do's and don'ts. Addressing one and all in the nation, he said: In every one of you there is the power of Brahman (God); the God in the poor desires you to serve (Him). This message has roused the heart of the youths in a pervasive way. That is why this message has borne fruit in the service of the nation in diverse ways and in diverse

forms of renunciation. His message has, at one and the same

time, imparted dignity and respect to man along with energy and

power';

and of whom Kazi Nazrul Islam sang:

Nava bhārate ānile tumi nava veda,

mūche dile jātidharmer bhed;

jīve īśvare ābhed ātmā jānāile uccāri—

'You brought to New India a new Veda, and washed away

her stain of separateness of religions and castes by proclaiming

from the house-tops the inherent divinity of man.'

Romain Rolland calls Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Viveka-

nanda Pater Seraphicus and Jove the Thunderer, whose benefi-

cent impact is already being felt by the spiritual seekers of all

religions.

The Upanisads and Western Christianity

Christianity in the West is already experiencing, under the

impact of the modern challenge, an unprecedented ferment and

questioning, resulting in a sincere quest, on the part of the various

Christian denominations, for the universal spiritual content of the

Christian religion underlying its denominational specialities and

exaggerations, and forging thereby an oecumenical Christian unity.

The success of this noble quest will entirely depend on increasing

emphasis on the Śruti aspects of Christianity and the soft-pedalling

of its Smṛti elements. And this is what is being done

by the denominations concerned, and with very hopeful results.

It is difficult to isolate, from among the complex factors,

the Vedāntic contribution to this healthy development. If

its content derives from the inescapable world conditions created

by modern science and technology, its stimulus and direction can

largely be traced to the silent but powerful influences proceeding

from the spread of Vedāntic ideas in the West in the wake of the

tumultuous ovation that greeted Swami Vivekananda when he ad-

dressed the historic Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.

Said he in that memorable address (Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 18):

'To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a

travelling, a coming up, of different men and women, through vari-

ous conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every reli-

gion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same

God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many

contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The

22

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.

'It is the same light coming through glasses of different colours. And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindu in his incarnation as Kṛṣṇa: "I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there".

No clearer and more authentic pronouncement on the nature and scope of the spiritual core of religions, on their Śruti aspects, has ever been uttered. And giving us an insight into the shape of things to come, he said later in that address (ibid., p. 19):

'If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Kṛṣṇa and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brāhmanic or Buddhistic, Christian or Moham-medan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which, in its catholicity, will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being, from the lowest grovelling savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.'

And addressing the final session of the Parliament, he uttered these prophetic words in conclusion (ibid., p. 20):

'If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possession of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: "Help and not Fight", "Assimilation and not Destruction", "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension".'

'His words are great music', remarks Romain Roland about Vivekananda's utterances (The Life of Vivekananda, p. 162). Vivekananda set to music the tune that was haunting the ears of

millions in the modern world, the tune of human unity and equality,

tolerance and love, the tune of the divine in the heart of man.

The Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western

Disciples quotes the following contribution from Mrs. Ella Wheeler

Wilcox, one of the foremost poetesses and writers of America, to

the New York American of 26 May 1907, giving her impressions

of Swami Vivekananda; though a bit long, it bears reproduction

in this context, as it provides a glimpse of the impact of the mes-

sage of Vedānta on thinking people in the West (pp. 394-95):

'Twelve years ago I chanced one evening to hear that a certain

teacher of philosophy from India. a man named Vivekananda. was

to lecture a block from my home in New York.

'We went out of curiosity (the man whose name I bear and

I), and before we had been ten minutes in the audience, we felt

ourselves lifted up into an atmosphere so rarified, so vital, so won-

derful, that we sat spell-bound and almost breathless, to the end

of the lecture.

'When'it was over we went out with new courage, new hope,

new strength, new faith, to meet life's daily vicissitudes. "This

is the Philosophy, this is the idea of God, the religion, which I

have been seeking", said the man. And for months afterwards

he went with me to hear Swami Vivekananda explain the old re-

ligion and to gather from his wonderful mind jewels of truth and

thoughts of helpfulness and strength. It was that terrible winter

of financial disasters, when banks failed and stocks went down like

broken balloons and businessmen walked through the dark valleys

of despair and the whole world seemed topsy-turvy—just such an

era as we are again approaching. Sometimes after sleepless nights

of worry and anxiety, the man would go with me to hear the

Swami lecture, and then he would come out into the winter gloom

and walk down the street smiling and say: "It is all right. There

is nothing to worry over." And I would go back to my own duties

and pleasures with the same uplifted sense of soul and enlarged

vision.

'When any philosophy, any religion, can do this for human be-

ings in this age of stress and strain, and when, added to that, it

intensifies their faith in God and increases their sympathies for

their kind and gives them a confident joy in the thought of other

lives to come, it is a good and great religion....

'We need to learn the greatness of the philosophy of India.

We need to enlarge our narrow creeds with the wisdom religious.

But we want to imbue them with our own modern spirit of prog-

ress, and to apply them practically, lovingly, and patiently to

human needs. Vivekananda came to us with a message... . "I do

not come to convert you to a new belief", he said. "I want you

to keep your own belief; I want to make the Methodist a better

Methodist; the Presbyterian a better Presbyterian; the Unitarian a better Unitarian. I want to teach you to live the truth, to reveal the light within your own soul." He gave the message that strengthened the man of business, that caused the frivolous society woman to pause and think; that gave the artist new aspirations; that imbued the wife and mother, the husband and father, with a larger and holier comprehension of duty.'

The contemporary approach of Christianity to inter-denominational unity reveals itself to be a Vedāntic approach not traceable to Christianity's own two-thousand year history. Accordingly, this approach is destined to find its consummation not only in inter-Christian unity, but in Christian-non-Christian unity as well. It will be a great event in human history when the spiritual energies of the world's religions, so long working in isolation or at cross purposes, become entirely positive and co-operative, and function as an integrated spiritual grid to redeem man from the depth of worldliness and restore him to his true spiritual dimension. This is the true line of human evolutionary advance; and its nursery and stimulus are to be sought in the spiritual core of the world's religions.

Upaniṣads and Indian Christianity

Christianity in India is practically coeval with Christian history itself. Indian Christian tradition traces the origin of the Christians of Kerala, the south-west state of India, to a visit of St. Thomas, a direct disciple of Jesus Christ, in the first century of the Christian era. From then to this day, Christianity in India, as also Judaism, which also reached Kerala about the same time, followed by Zoroastrianism, which reached western India eight centuries later, have been protected, cherished, and nourished by the mother-heart of Hinduism under the inspiration of the spiritual vision of the Vedāntic sages.

Western Christian penetration in India, both in its Catholic and Protestant forms, began from the sixteenth century under the most un-Christian auspices of western imperialism and colonialism. After four centuries of co-existence of a dogmatic and intolerant Christianity with an all-inclusive and tolerant Hinduism, during which a silent give-and-take process was going on all the time, Indian Christianity has succeeded in finding its own soul and has begun to assert its Indian character. A glorious future for Indian Christianity is assured thereby, not only as a national, but also as an international, spiritual force.

INTRODUCTION

25

Christianity in India today is experiencing a thought-ferment from the impact of Vedānta, whose scientific terminology in the field of religion is steadily invading its exposition and presentation in sermons and books. This is resulting in a steady release of Indian Christianity from its rigid Smṛti elements—the dogmatic and credal limitations which had kept it ever in conflict with its sister religions and among its own denominations—and its steady conversion into a wholly positive spiritual force proceeding from its Śruti nucleus, keen to respond to the positive spiritual forces of her sister faiths with a view to meeting the spiritual challenges of the industrial age into which modern India is deliberately plunging at a fast pace. As early as 1913, the Christian journal, Indian Interpreter, published a significantly titled article ‘Christian Vedāntism’ by R. Gordon Milburn, in which the writer highlights the need for Christianity to open itself to the influences of Vedānta (quoted by S. Radhakrishnan in his The Principal Upaniṣads, p. 19, ‘Introduction’, footnote):

‘Christianity in India needs the Vedānta. We missionaries have not realized this with half the clearness that we should. We cannot move freely and joyfully in our own religion, because we have not sufficient terms and modes of expression wherewith to express the more immanental aspects of Christianity. A very useful step would be the recognition of certain books or passages in the literature of Vedānta as constituting what might be called an Ethnic Old Testament. The permission of ecclesiastical authorities could then be asked for reading passages found in such a canon of Ethnic Old Testament at divine service along with passages from the New Testament as alternative to the Old Testament lessons.’

In the ‘Introduction’ to his book, Christianity as Bhakti Mārga, published as early as 1926 by The Christian Literature Society for India, as the first book of its ‘Indian Studies Series’, the author, A.J. Appasamy, M.A. (Harvard), D.Phil. (Oxon), an eminent Indian Christian, writes:

‘In attempting to understand how Christianity is likely to relate itself in the coming years to Indian thought and become a living force in the country, I am inclined to think that it will lay much emphasis on mystic experience.’

Emphasizing that this mystic orientation of Indian Christianity will be of the bhakti type, the author says further on:

‘When we speak of interpreting Christianity in its relation to the spirit of India’s religious genius, we have to remember that India’s religious genius has expressed itself in systems of philosophy, religious practices, and sacred books often most diverse.

The immediate task which lies before Indian Christians anxious to make clear to themselves and to others the relation between the real spirit of Christianity and the real spirit of India's religious life is that of choice. We have to decide what particular form of religious life in India is best suited for this purpose. As there are many types of religious thought in India, an inevitable consequence of the attempts of Christian thinkers to adjust the expression of their religious experience to the terms and ideas familiar to India would be the development of many types of Indian Christianity.'

The Upaniṣads and Indian Islam

The influence of the Upaniṣads on Indian Islam has not been very profound in the past. Even though Sufism, the mystical offshoot of Islam, owes much to the Upaniṣads, Islam as a whole, which has been generally hostile to its own offshoot as to all non-Islamic faiths, has remained largely unaffected.

Prophet Mohammed was a deep lover of God and man. And he has breathed this double love into the Koran. Below are given a few verses taken from the English translation of the Koran by Al-Haj Hafiz Ghulam Sarwar.

The following three verses singing the glory of God can be found repeated in any number of verses in the Vedas and the Upaniṣads. The opening verses of the Koran possess rare spiritual majesty and beauty:

(We commence) with the name of God,

The most Merciful (to begin with),

The most Merciful (to the end)

All praise belongs to God,

Lord of all the worlds,

The most Merciful (to begin with),

The most Merciful (to the end).

Master of the day of Judgment.

Thee alone do we serve,

And Thee alone do we ask for help.

Guide us on the right path,

The path of those upon whom be Thy blessings,

Not of those upon whom be (Thy) wrath,

Nor of those who are lost.

In verse 255 of Chapter 2, we read about the power and glory

of God:

God!

There is no deity but He,

The Ever-living,

The All-sustaining:

Slumber overtakes Him not,

Nor sleep.

To Him belongs

What is in the heavens,

And what is in the earth.

Who is there to second anyone before Him

Except with His authority?

He knows what is in front of them,

And what is behind them;

And they encompass nothing of His knowledge

Except what He pleases;

And His power extends over the heavens and the earth;

And the guardianship of these tires Him not,

And He is

The Uppermost,

The Highest.

Verse 25 of Chapter 3 sings the majesty of God:

Say: 'O God! Master of the kingdom,

Thou givest the kingdom to whom Thou pleasest.

And Thou snatchest the kingdom from whom Thou pleasest;

And Thou exaltest whom Thou pleasest;

And Thou abasest whom Thou pleasest;

In Thy hand is all good:

Thou art capable of doing all Thou pleasest'.

The Koran contains specific mention that salvation is not the

monopoly of the Musiims. Verse 62 of Chapter 2 says:

As to those who believe (in the Quran),

And the Jews,

And the Christians,

And the Sabians—

Whoever believes in God

And the future day

And does good,

For such, then, there is a reward with their Lord,

And there shall be no fear on them,

Nor shall they grieve.

The Koran insists that the only condition to be fulfilled to

obtain divine mercy is good life and good deeds and not subscrip-

tion to a creed (ibid., 2, 177):

There is no virtue in your turning your faces

Towards the East or the West,

But virtuous is he who believes in God,

And (in) the future day,

And (in) the messenger-spirits,

And the Book,

And the Prophets,

And he who gives his wealth, in spite of his love for it,

To the near of kin,

And the orphans,

And the needy,

And the wayfarer,

And the beggars,

And in ransoming the slaves,

And who keeps up the prayer,

And pays the stated alms;

And those who fulfil their covenants when they covenant;

And the persevering ones

In hardship,

And injury,

And in time of war;

These are the truthful,

And these! They are the reverent.

The prophet had set a high example of tolerance and respect

in his dealings with non-Muslims. Verse 256 of Chapter 2 of the

Koran upholds religious toleration and fellowship:

Let there be no compulsion in religion,

The right path has surely been made distinct from the wrong,

Then whoever disbelieves in the transgressor,

And believes in God,

He has, then, got hold of the firm handle,

No breaking therefor:

And God is Hearing, Knowing.

Verse 135 of Chapter 4 (also verse 8 of Chapter 5) emphasizes justice and equity in inter-personal relations:

O ye who believe!

Be maintainers of justice,

Witnesses for the sake of God,

And though it be against yourselves,

Or your parents,

And your relations.

Whether a person be rich or poor,

Then God is nearer to them (than you),

Therefore follow not (your) low desires

Lest you do not do justice.

And if you distort (the evidence),

Or keep away,

Then, surely, God knows well what you do.

These and other similar verses of the Koran proclaim truths which are eternal and universal; they constitute, in the language of Indian spiritual tradition, the Śruti content of Islam. This is Islam as a path to God. There is also another aspect of Islam as a way of life in society. This constitutes the large Smṛti content in the Koran, the group of ideas and values which the prophet gave to his people to weld them into an Arab nation. This is of limited application, as it constitutes its personal laws and social rules and regulations—all those elements that form the socio-political content of a religion. No scripture can legislate on these for all time and for all peoples. The laws that were beneficial to the Arabs of the seventh century A.D. may not be beneficial to the Indians or Indo-nesians, Europeans or Americans, and strangely enough, even to the Arabs themselves of the twentieth century. Progressive Arab states today are wisely modifying them in response to the demands of the modern age.

But the spiritual message of the Koran, its teaching which shows man a path to spiritual realization, is eternal and universal. In periods of dynamic social changes, every religion needs to be subjected to a reinterpretation process, 'a winnowing process', in the words of Toynbee referred to earlier, with emphasis on its spirit and a softpedalling of its letter, a greater stress on the eternal and less on the historical, so that it may emerge reconstructed to meet the challenge of the new age; for 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life', as the New Testament puts it. If this is not

done, the religion concerned becomes a procrustean bed, twisting the personalities of its followers.

The Sufi movement in Islam, arising from the contact of Islam with Christian mysticism and pre-Islamic Iranian spiritual traditions, sought to emphasize its Śruti content, its non-historical elements, its eternal spiritual core; here Islam as a path to spiritual realization shines most. It found a welcome soil first in Mesopotamia and Iran, then in India, where it became powerfully influenced by Vedānta. But everywhere it had to face fierce opposition and persecution from orthodox Islam, which was centred in a rigid allegiance to its Smṛti contents, including its parochial socio-political ideology and programmes initiated, more often, by ambitious rulers and ruthless military adventurers. Socio-political ideologies uninspired by high moral and spiritual values tend to nourish the lower self of man from which proceed selfishness and intolerance, violence and war. The first object of every religion is to check and discipline this lower self of man. But instead of that, instead of religion elevating the socio-political ideology to its own level, it is itself brought down to the level of the other, and functions as its handmaid. This phenomenon afflicted Islam from too close an association with real-politik, as it also afflicted Christianity after Constantine. The saints of Islam, the lovers of God and man, became muted and the voice of Islam was sounded by ignorant zealots, and by war-minded conquerors, un-Islamic and worldly to the core, in search of loot and power and pleasure, who used and abused the name of Islam to cover their own worldly propensities.

Indian contact with Islam was through Muslim Arab merchants and missionaries during the first four centuries after the birth of Islam. This phase represented the normal form of inter-religious and international contact resulting in mutual benefit from a peaceful give-and-take process. It was also the period when Islam reached the height of its power and glory, with the Arab national mind keen for the acquisition of, and warmly hospitable to, new ideas, and taking freely from Greco-Roman, Iranian, and Indian cultures.

But from early thirteenth century, all this changed. Dissentions and corruption set in in the wake of imperial power and luxury, which overwhelmed the simple desert Arab; and the Mongol invasions in the middle of that century finally destroyed the hegemony of Arab Islam. Islamic learning and culture suffered a terrible eclipse, which was to continue for centuries together. The

conquerors, and other central Asian groups in their wake, adopted Islam or, rather adapted Islam to their own low cultural standards and purposes. When reason and love of truth were dethroned, the 'letter of the law' triumphed, and reactionary orthodoxy entered into unholy alliance with military adventurers, blessing their violent deeds and converting them into a succession of holy wars and jehads with the seal of religious approval.

This was the second phase of Islamic contact experienced by India from about the twelfth century onwards, when India and its religions were systematically battered in the name of that religion which had, during the preceding centuries, nourished a culture an a political state which had freely learnt from Indian knowledge and wisdom and had been the torch-bearer of science and humanism. The history of India and the character of Indian Islam and Hindu society would have been different if Islam had come to India in this second phase as in that first phase, as a friend and in peace. This is one of the crucial might-have-beens of human history. It would then have contributed its equalitarian social gospel to the purification of the caste-ridden social edifice of Hinduism. Hinduism would have gladly learnt these lessons from it, while imparting its own Vedāntic outlook and tolerance to the sister faith. But the fact that Islam in its most effective forms came to India through ignorant zealots and militant conquerors, through what Nietzsche terms 'violence of deed and demeanour', made Islam an eyesore to the Hindu mind. It is one of those sad chapters in inter-cultural contacts which yielded bitter fruits, but which, in a different form, would have been fruitful of great results for the religion and culture of mankind.

This second phase, therefore, has written a sad chapter in the history of India, whose far-reaching evil effects constitute the most serious challenge to Indian wisdom today. And India is facing this stupendous task with the strength and dynamism, far-sight and foresight of her Upaniṣadic heritage.

All the lofty ideas of love of God and man, justice and equity in human relations, equality between man and man, and toleration and respect for other faiths—in short, all the Śruti aspects of Islam, which are the nurseries of the progressive trends of a religion, became submerged in successive waves of bigotry and intolerance. Hindus and their saints were not the only victims of this reactionary Islam; Muslims themselves, including some of Islam's

lovable saints, holding progressive spiritual views or upholding rational socio-political ideas and programmes, became subjected to persecution, torture, and death. And yet, much give and take and cross-fertilization of the two cultures did take place; and mystics and saints did not fail to arise from time to time during this period, as witnesses to the eternal and universal values embedded in the Islamic religion, thus demonstrating the vitality of its Sruti aspect. The period also saw the occasional appearance of a king or an emperor, with forward-looking state policies, such as the early Mughals and Sher Shah. Such saints and rulers have always responded to the spiritual beauty and depth of Indian wisdom as expressed in Vedānta.

Hindu tolerance continued in the midst of Muslim intolerance because that tolerance was the product of a spiritual vision and philosophical conviction bequeathed by the Upaniṣads, which had become an inseparable part of the Indian outlook and way of life. There is a uniqueness about Indian toleration in that it has always been the product of religious faith, unlike the toleration developed by the modern West resulting from its waning of faith in religion. Explaining this Indian approach, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan says (Eastern Religions and Western Thought, p. 317):

'Toleration is the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the Infinite.'

Muslim chroniclers themselves have noted this strange phenomenon of Hindu tolerance in the midst of Muslim intolerance. Dr. Radhakrishnan quotes (ibid., p. 312) the following passage from Murray's Discoveries and Travels in Asia (Vol. II, p. 20) in which the author gives the remarks of a Muslim ambassador from Persia to the court of the Hindu ruler of Calicut in Kerala:

'The people (of Calicut) are infidels; consequently I (Abdul Razak Berni, Ambassador from the court of Persia about the middle of the fifteenth century) consider myself in an enemy's country, as the Mohammadan's consider everyone who has not received the Koran. Yet I admit that I meet with perfect toleration, and even favour; we have two mosques and are allowed to pray in public.'

Even the bigoted Muslim chronicler of Aurangzeb's reign, Khafi Khan, felt compelled to give high tributes to Shivaji, the Hindu ruler of the South, who cherished Hindus and Muslims alike and cared for their holy places with equal solicitude, even while resisting tooth and nail the policy of systematic oppression of the

Hindus zealously practised by the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb. The same cultured attitude and policy were adopted by Guru Govind Singh in the Punjab during his relentless struggle against the intolerance and oppression of this emperor who saw at his death in 1707 the dismemberment of the mighty Moghul empire due to his own follies. Says historian S. N. Sen in his The Military System of the Marathas (p. 18).

'In India religious intolerance has been very rare and Shivaji's conception of a Hindu empire was in no way identified with religious persecution. He enlisted in his army seven hundred (Muslim) Pathan deserters from Bijapur, at least three of his naval commanders were Muslims by faith, and he venerated the Muhammadan saint Sheikh Muhammad as he venerated the Hindu saints Tukaram and Ramdas. He granted inām lands for "the illumination of and food offerings to, the shrines of Muhammadan saints, and Muslim mosques were maintained by state allowance". Only once in his eventful career did he fail to respect the asylum given by a Muhammadan saint to some fugitives, but he never failed to show due respect to the holy scriptures of the Muslims. And Khafi Khan, who delights in showering the most opprobrious epithets ... on him, is yet constrained to admit that "he made it a rule that whenever his followers went plundering, they should do no harm to the mosques, the Book of God, or the women of anyone. Whenever a copy of the sacred Koran came into his hands, he treated it with respect, and gave it to some of his Mussalman followers. When the women of any Hindu or Muhammadan were taken prisoners by his men, and they had no friend to protect them, he watched over them until their relations came with a suitable ransom to buy their liberty." (Elliot and Dawson, History of India, Vol. II, pp. 254, 256, 262, and 269).'

Islamic intolerance, as we have seen, is not the fruit of Islam as such, but of its fundamentalist interpretation, of its mixing up of religion with parochial and exclusive tribalism and political nationalism. Islam, as history shows, has also exhibited, in its progressive variety, the finest tolerance in the lives of several of its saints and laymen, kings and states. In the context of the modern world, the mind and face of that fundamentalist Islam wear the look of a long-vanished age. But there is also the mind and face of this progressive Islam which is today struggling to work out a new Islamic yugadharma, the dharma for this yuga or age, as Indian thought puts it. This latter Islam has already begun to move the minds and hearts of millions in several Arab states. The conflict between the two types of Islam shows itself essentially as a conflict between reactionary and progressive forces, between

rigid backward-looking and resilient forward-looking ideologies, the former viewing Islam as a finished and final Smṛti, exclusive and intolerant of all other Smṛtis, and the latter viewing it in the light of its Śruti elements and the scientific and humanistic thought of the modern age, and striving to forge a new Islamic Smṛti in tune with what is eternal in Islam and with the spirit of modern enlightenment.

Modern Indian Islam, except in small groups here and there, has so far escaped this conflict in any serious form due, among other things, to the encouragement and support given by the foreign British government, in the interest of its own self-perpetuation, to all reactionary forces in Indian Islam, and to the frenzied upheaval which preceded and led to the partition of India in 1947; these abnormal circumstances helped to nourish and sustain the ideology of that backward-looking Islam. But the conflict between the progressive and the reactionary is bound to invade Indian Islam also as it has already invaded Arab Islam. Due to the exigencies of its birth, Pakistani Islam may experience it somewhat later. Earlier or later, no religion or society today, be it Muslim, Christian, or Hindu, can escape the inquisitive, and often irreverent, questioning and peering by increasing sections of its intelligent youths, both girls and boys, educated and nurtured in modern thought. The searchlight of critical thought will soon be systematically directed by thoughtful Indian Muslims on their religious traditions with a view to finding out what is essential, and separating what is obsolete, in them, as it was directed earlier by free-minded Christians on Christianity and free-minded Hindus on Hinduism.

When this becomes a barrage, either of two things may result: the onset of a reforming zeal which, for want of insight into, and faith in, the higher spiritual dimensions of religion, will begin to secularize Islam by reforming its obsolete elements, and end in reforming away Islam itself, and converting it into a mere social reform programme, into a mere worldly ideology, as has happened in the case of protestant Christianity; or else, the setting in of a process of creative adjustment in which the eternal and universal spiritual message of Islam will be increasingly liberated, the forces of which tending to align with the kindred forces of her sister faiths with a view to providing the bread of religion to the spiritually hungry modern Muslim youth who refuses to be fed on the stones of exclusive and outworn dogmas and creeds.

INTRODUCTION

35

This search for the essential and casting away of the non-essential is a hoary tradition in Islamic spirituality. Dr. Bhagawan Das refers (Essential Unity of All Religions, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Edition, 1960, p. 100) to the verse in the famous Masnavi, which is accepted in the Muslim world generally as next only to the Koran in holiness, in which the author, Maulānā Jalāl-Ud-din Rūmi describes in beautiful Persian the purpose of his work as precisely this:

Man ze Qurān maghz rā bardāstam,

Ustukkhān peșe sagān andakhtam—

'The marrow from the Koran have I drawn,

And the dry bones unto the dogs have cast.'

When this is done with regard to the Koran today, the scope of the Smrti aspect of Islam, such as personal laws and social rules relating to marriage, inheritance, etc., will be subjected to rational scrutiny, and become wisely relegated to the care of political constitutions and parliamentary social legislations and to the enlightened social consciences of the respective nations, on the one hand, and of the various legislative organs of the international community, on the other.

The two courses above enumerated mean either the secularization of religion or the spiritualization of the secular life of man; the latter will meet the contemporary demand for the toning up of the secular life of man in terms of the essential core of spiritual truths imbedded in religion.

Whatever may be the future course of Islam in other countries with respect to these two alternatives, the course of Indian Islam will be determined not only by the spiritual forces arising from within itself, but also by its environing forces, the forces proceeding from the total Indian social situation, conditioned, among other things, by the hoary Indian culture with a spiritual base and a spiritual direction. And these forces, so far as religion is concerned, are the forces arising from the strengthening, purifying, and unifying philosophy and vision of the Upaniṣads. Many scholars and thinkers of Islam and Hinduism, past and present, have expressed the conviction that the spiritual core of Islam is perfectly in tune with this philosophy and vision, and that some of the practical achievements of Islam, such as social equality, are more so than similar achievements of Hinduism itself. The closer alignment now of these two kindred spiritual forces will help not only

in the evolution of a progressive modern Indian national society, free, equalitarian, and spiritually oriented, but will also result in the evolution of a distinctively Indian Islam stamped with the Indian spiritual genius, and in the development of Islamic democracy.

The revivalist movements in Indian Islam have so far been politically inspired and motivated, backward-looking, and productive of bitter fruits. They have done everything to suppress the redeeming forces of the spirituality of Islam and its close kinship with Hindu and Christian spirituality. But Indian Islam cannot long escape the modern impact; it is bound, before long, to pass through a process of inner ferment and questioning under the stimulus of expanding modern education and the nourishment provided by the free atmosphere of Indian democracy. These two circumstances offer the supreme opportunity to every Indian religion to bring the highest and best out of itself. When Indian Islam begins to avail of this opportunity, it will capture a forward-looking mood and temper and that dynamic capacity for assimilation of new ideas which it manifested in the Middle East in the heyday of its glory under the Caliphate. This is bound to bring the higher mind of Islam under the spell of Vedānta, and of its dynamic modern expression in Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, as it fell under the spell of classical Greek thought and higher pre-Islamic Persian thought in that earlier period. It will then experience a pervasive revival and reconstruction of a truly spiritual character in tune with the enlightenment and progressive spirit and demands of the modern age. It can be predicted that such a reconstruction of Indian Islam will see the appearance of new commentaries and other types of studies on the Koran in the light of the Upaniṣads. Vivekananda believed that the modern renaissance in India will result in a happy synthesis of the spiritual streams of Vedānta and Islam, a consummation which was fervently wished for, and achieved in a small way, by the saints and laymen of both the religions even during the unpropitious times of the Middle Ages. This is the glorious future before Indian Islām today.

The Upaniṣads and Indian Secularism

The Cross and the Crescent have always been at loggerheads with each other all over the world. This is in for a profound change in the Indian context today. When Indian Christianity and Indian Islām will achieve their spiritual self-discovery, they will

issue forth as distinct national and international spiritual forces, in harmony with each other and with the other world religions. To India herself, this will be the consummation of that process which Vivekananda refers to as 'the union of her scattered spiritual forces'. The Indian Constitution and the Indian state are passionately wedded to the ideal of freedom—freedom of thought and conscience and freedom to profess and practise the faith of one's choice, and even freedom to live without a faith. And freedom is the one condition of growth, says Swami Vivekananda. In the passionate words which he uttered in the course of his lectures on 'Practi. l Vedānta' delivered in London in 1896 (Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 336):

'We should, therefore, follow reason and also sympathathize with those who do not come to any sort of belief, following reason. For it is better that mankind should become atheist by following reason than blindly believe...on the authority of anybody. What we want is progress, development, realization. No theories ever made men higher. No amount of books can help us to become purer. The only power is in realization and that lies in ourselves and comes from thinking. Let men think. A clod of earth never thinks; but it remains only a lump of earth. The glory of man is that he is a thinking being. It is the nature of man to think and therein he differs from animals. I believe in reason and fol- low reason having seen enough of the evils of authority, for I was born in a country where they have gone to the extreme of authority.'

The freedoms granted and guaranteed by the Indian state are meant to ensure the all-round growth of the Indian people through stimulation of their thinking and initiative. They seek to convert India into a vast laboratory of human development for a seventh of the human race, in a milieu of freedom and equality and the sacredness of the human personality.

This is the meaning of India declaring herself a secular state. The vast majority of those who met in the Constituent Assembly in Delhi and voted the Indian constitution in 1949 were religious and not irreligious. And yet, they adopted the principles and policies of a secular constitution for their deeply religious country. We should not fail to note the significance of this. In the words of Dr. Radhakrishnan (Recovery of Faith, p. 202):

'Though faith in the Supreme is the basic principle of the Indian tradition, the Indian state will not identify itself with or be controlled by any particular religion....This view of religious impartiality, of comprehension and forbearance, has a prophetic role to play within the national and the international life....The religious impartiality of the Indian state is not to be confused with

secularism or atheism. Secularism as here defined is in accordance with the ancient religious tradition of India. It tries to build up a fellowship of believers, not by subordinating individual qualities to the group mind but by bringing them into harmony with each other. This dynamic fellowship is based on the principle of diversity in unity which alone has the quality of creativeness.'

A secular state so conceived, one that is not wedded either to religious indifference or anti-religious atheism, but impartially promotes all religions, believing in the spiritual dimension of the human personality over and above his sensate nature, is a unique phenomenon 'with a prophetic role to play', as remarked by Dr. Radhakrishnan. It is more appropriately termed the Vedāntic state, for the inspiration behind it is the tolerant all-embracing Upaniṣadic tradition. No such secular state has existed in history, ancient or modern, either in the East or in the West, including India. In Indian history, we come across great states dedicated, no doubt, to toleration and inter-religious fellowship, but also committed to one particular faith. In western history, on the other hand, we come across states which hold the scales even between its diverse faiths, itself uninterested in all of them, except politically. This is specially true of the Roman Empire, the various cults and religions of which, in the cynical remark of Gibbon, 'were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrates as equally useful'. The United States of America comes closest to the Indian concept, where the separation of church and state co-exists with a general commitment to God and religion. But the American political philosophy does not claim any insight into, and is unconcerned with, the faith of the individual as such, but is concerned only with its social expression in his or her conduct and behaviour. It is the presence of this insight and its integration with man's external life that makes Vedānta a complete philosophy which has the courage and capacity to see life steadily and see it as a whole.

'The New Testament dictum, 'Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's', is only a working principle at its best. It leaves man as a denizen of two unreconciled worlds, either of which may encroach, or be encroached by, the other, to the detriment of human progress and well-being. Both have happened in history. Whatever be the justification for this dualism of God and Caesar in the past, it is utterly irrelevant in the modern age with its unprecedented enlightenment and prog-

ress, when no aspect of human experience is left out of the scrutiny of reason, and when there is a growing international integration of the human communities. The philosophy of 'Caesar and his dues' and the philosophy of 'God and His dues' need to be comprehended in an integral philosophy of total experience, in a unifying vision of 'man and nature. We need a philosophy which bridges the gulf between action and contemplation, work and worship, the secular and the sacred. This is Vedānta, which Swami Vivekananda preached in East and West alike at the end of the last century. Highlighting its unifying vision, Sister Nivedita (Miss Margaret Noble) writes ('Introduction: Our Master and His Message', Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. I, p. xv):

'The many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the mind at different times and in different attitudes.

'It is this which adds its crowning significance to our Master's life, for here he becomes the meeting-point,-not only of East and West, but also of past and future. If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.

'This is the realization which makes Vivekananda the great preacher of karma (detached action), not as divorced from, but as expressing jñāna (Self-knowledge) and bhakti (love of God). To him, the workshop, the study, the farmyard, and the field are as true and fit scenes for the meeting of God with man as the cell of the monk or the door of the temple. To him, there is no difference between service of man and worship of God, between manliness and faith, between true righteousness and spirituality.'

The search for such a philosophy will become insistent day by day; and it will draw all thinking people, be they Hindus, Christians, or Muslims, or others, within India or abroad, into the orbit of Indian thought and to the charms of the philosophy and spirituality of its undying source, the Upaniṣads.

The Upanisads and the Ideological Struggle

The modern world is in the grip of various ideologies, of which the most effective ones are those which are most narrow and exclusive. Up to the modern period, religion, especially those of the Semitic family—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were the nurseries of these exclusive and narrow ideologies. But in the modern

period, as religions are wisely shedding this vice of narrowness and exclusiveness, it has moved over to the socio-political fields. The eclipse of liberal ideologies in these fields is one of the more glaring features of the twentieth century. Calm and clear reason has all but disappeared from vast segments of man's socio-political ideologies; they seem to be under the grip of the blind attachments, fears, and hatreds of his collective unconscious. It is a heartening sign of the second half of this century that man's collective reason, organized in international groups and associations, is waging a slow but successful struggle to tame the blind forces of his collective unreason in these fields. Setbacks there may be; but nothing can thwart permanently the onward march of this struggle; for it is the manifestation of the time spirit. Behind it is the dynamic energy of that scientific reason and enlightenment of the modern age whose impact is already evident in the field of religion, for which it provided the milieu and the stimulus to struggle to liberate itself from the blind forces of man's collective unreason, and make it function in the light of reason.

Scientific deliberations are generally conducted in a calm atmosphere, and differences of opinion are tolerated. This was absent in the field of religion due to the very initial divorce of reason from religion. This is changing fast. Encounters between religions are increasingly taking place today in an atmosphere of decreasing emotional temperatures. This dawn of sanity in inter-religious relationships is a priceless gift of reason as expressed in Vedānta and modern thought. It is reasonable to expect that the light of reason will eventually succeed in conquering unreason, and in introducing sanity, in the socio-political fields as well. It may take longer, as these fields are the arenas of man's search for power and pleasure, largely at the dictates of the blind forces of his lower sensate nature. When reason succeeds in establishing a measure of sanity in this field, democracy, which upholds human dignity and equality, and which has been under constant 'threat from these underground forces of human nature, will become firmly established as the best political and social value and technique. The struggle for sanity will continue till the position with respect to ideologies will become reversed, so that, unlike now, the most effective ones will be those which are most broad and inclusive.

But this needs the ministrations not only of scientific reason, but also of Vedāntic reason; for the latter alone has the capacity

to purify the emotional springs of man's energies, centred in his

worldly and religious aspirations, of all their narrowness and ex-

clusiveness, retaining intact, at the same time, their intensity and

dynamism. This our scientific reason is unable to do by itself;

when it eliminates narrowness, it tends to destroy also the energy

of the emotions in the process.

Hence the contribution of the Upaniṣads in bringing about this

great consummation is going to be vital and pervasive. Ideals and

ideologies are vital to human life and achievement; they give direc-

tion to powerful human emotions. Without their help, man be-

comes flabby and ineffective, and often blunders all along. If a

man with ideals commits a thousand mistakes, says Vivekananda,

a man without ideals will commit ten thousand mistakes. Hence

the dictum of Vivekananda: Let sects multiply; but sectarianism

must go. Narrowly conceived ideals have done as much harm as

good in religion and politics. Intensity was obtained at the cost

of extensity; extensity, on the other hand, has always resulted in

a reduction of intensity. The current flows fast in a narrow stream.

When the river broadens, the current loses in intensity.

This has been the dual choice before man with respect to ideo-

logies. The modern age is in search of ideologies which yield the

fruit of maximum character. This signifies, according to Vedānta,

the simultaneous presence of intensity and extensity. Vivekananda

presented Vedānta as a fearless philosophy of life which helps man

to frame ideologies for himself combining, to use his own words,

'the intensity of the fanatic with the extensity of the materialist'.

It derives its intensity from its inward spiritual penetration and its

extensity from its outward human concern, in both of which it up-

holds reason as the guide. Such an ideology gives, in the words of

Vivekananda, a-character 'deep as the ocean and broad as the skies'.

Vedānta considers this as the true line of human evolutionary ad-

vance. And it has given to the modern age the example of such

a character in Sri Ramakrishna, who was not only the very per-

sonification of the intensity of religion, but also encompassed, in his

infinite sympathy, atheists and agnostics along with believers be-

longing to the world's diverse and often mutually hostile religions.

The Upaniṣads and the Modern Crisis

The modern world is experiencing a far-reaching re-assessment

in all aspects of human life and thought. Initiated and sustained

by the positive sciences and modern technology, this process began as an intellectual movement but soon developed into a dynamic socio-political force. In its methods and results, it was as much a destructive force as a constructive one. It lifted man from many fears and uncertainties of his primitive past and landed him in new and more gnawing fears and uncertainties. It destroyed many a fable and myth and superstition imbedded in his past traditions, and challenged, and continues to challenge, the credentials of every one of his beliefs and practices in the moral, religious, socio-economic, and other fields of his life.

These are solid gains; but they are not enough; they have 'lengthened the ropes' without, however, 'strengthening the stakes' as the Bible puts it. The tree of life has branched wide without correspondingly rooting deep. In the modern achievement, the sciences of nature have far outstripped the sciences of man; leaving man puny and unstable, with his centre of gravity always outside of himself. Moral and spiritual values emerge only from the sciences of man. Referring to this imbalance, the bitter fruits of which are found in the shallowness and sterility of much of modern intellectualism and in the widespread cynicism among the intellectuals, Bertrand Russell says (The Scientific Outlook, pp. 278-79):

'Man has been disciplined hitherto by his subjection to nature. Having emancipated himself from this subjection, he is showing something of the defects of slave-turned-master. A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous. So long as it is present, science, having delivered man from bondage to nature, can proceed to deliver him from bondage to the slavish part of himself.'

This 'respect for what is best in man', and the science which will 'proceed to deliver man from bondage to the slavish part of himself', is what the Upaniṣads developed ages ago in India in her adhyātma vidyā, in her science of the inner world of man, in her 'science of human possibilities', in the words of Julian Huxley. The intellect on which the light of the Ātman shines is far different from the intellect which is in thrall to the sense-organs. 'These two groups of sciences-the sciences of outer nature and the sciences of inner nature-need to pool their resources together to advance man on the evolutionary path of total fulfilment. 'Take religion away from human society and what remains is a forest of brutes',

says Swami Vivekananda. Echoing this conviction in the concluding portion of his Autobiography, astro-physicist R.A. Millikan says:

'It seems to me that the two great pillars upon which all human well-being and human progress rest are, first, the spirit of religion, and, second, the spirit of science—or knowledge. Neither can attain its largest effectiveness without support from the other. To promote the latter, we have universities and research institutions. But the supreme opportunity for everyone with no exception lies in the first.'

Without the spiritual nourishment coming from religion, the phenomenal progress of the modern age has become wobbly in its movement and blind in its course.

Lead Kindly Light

The 'wheel of modern progress' revolves faster and faster decade after decade, and man everywhere is feeling dazed and unable to find his bearings. He finds himself deep in a situation where his past is unrecoverable, his present uncertain, and his future an interrogation. Is this the twilight of a day of hope and cheer ahead, or of a night holding gloom and sorrow in store? Never in human history has man experienced so much darkness within him in the midst of all-round enlightenment outside of him, so much inner poverty in the context of measureless enrichment without, and so much loneliness in the midst of an environing crowd. The modern crisis is thus essentially a spiritual crisis, and modern man is seeking for light to lead him out of the encircling gloom. His heart today is crying for truth, for light, and for life. All these facts indicate that the whole of the modern world is in the throes of a silent spiritual revolution. The sentiments of the ancient Vedic prayer are echoed in the silent murmurings, deep searchings, and unspoken prayers of the heart of modern man (Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, I. 3. 28):

Asato mā sadgamaya;

Tamaso mā jyotirgamaya;

Mr̥tyor mā amr̥tam gamaya—

'From the unreal lead me to the Real;

From darkness lead me to Light;

From death lead me to Immortality.'

To convert this twilight into a twilight of dawn and of a brighter day is the challenge facing human knowledge and human wisdom

today. Great thinkers of the past and present have held fast to

the conviction that the eternal soul of India has preserved, through

the ups and downs of her long history, a perennial message of hope

and cheer to all humanity.

In the preface to his book, The World as Will and Idea (Vol. I,

Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1957, pp. XII-XIII), Scho-

penhauer, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, has

referred to the impact which the Vedānta will in due course have

on the West. After stating that the West's acquaintance with the

Vedas,

'the access to which, opened to us through the Upaniṣads, is in

my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century

enjoys over previous ones',

he predicted:

'I believe that the influence of the Sanskrit literature will pene-

trate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in

the fifteenth century.'

Concluding his treatment of India in Our Oriental Heritage

(written in 1935), the first volume of his series on The Story of

Civilization, the American philosopher and historian, Will Durant,

says (p. 633):

'One cannot conclude the history of India as one can conclude

the history of Egypt, or Babylonia, or Assyria; for that history is

still being made, that civilization is still creating....

'It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has

sent to us such questionable gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy,

and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all, our numerals and

our decimal system. But these are not the essence of her spirit;

they are trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the

future. As invention, industry, and trade bind the continents to-

gether, or as they fling us into conflict with Asia, we shall study

its civilizations more closely, and shall absorb, even in enmity,

some of its ways and thoughts. Perhaps, in return for conquest,

arrogance, and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and

gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisi-

tive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying,

pacifying love for all living things.'

Swami Vivekananda considered this to be India's distinctive

contribution to the sum total of human progress. In a letter writ-

ten from America in 1894, the Swami says (Complete Works, Vol.

V, p. 43):

'The whole world requires Light. It is expectant! India alone

has that Light, not in magic, mummeries, and charlatanism, but in

the teaching of the glories of the spirit of real religion—of the highest spiritual truth. That is why the Lord has preserved the race through all its vicissitudes unto the present day. Now the time has come.'

This conviction of Vivekananda and other thinkers derives its guarantee from the Upaniṣads, and the living spiritual tradition, intellectually strong, scientific, and therefore universal, flowing from them and getting periodically enriched by spiritual giants like Buddha and Śaṅkara, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The following pages of The Message of the Upaniṣads will, I hope, enable the reader to test for himself or herself the strength and relevance of this conviction and its guarantee.

ONE

OUR SPIRITUAL HERITAGE

This evening I come before you in a capacity differing somewhat from that of previous occasions when I have lectured at this Institute of Culture. On those occasions I was a guest, but now I am a host, and I am extremely happy to be here in Calcutta, after nearly thirteen years in New Delhi, to work as Secretary in this important branch of the Ramakrishna Mission.

The subject of my talk to you this evening, and this talk will be the first of a series of studies of the great spiritual literature of India comprised in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā, is one which is in the very spirit of this Institute–‘Our Spiritual Heritage’ This Institute seeks to assimilate the spiritual legacy of humanity, of both East and West. And part of that legacy of humanity is the eternal legacy of India which is spiritual through and through. The visions which have been embodied in the immortal literature of this country, particularly in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā, have something eternal about them. They are the visions of the seers, sages, and thinkers of ancient India. These visions were embodied in a cultural experiment which involved a seventh of the human race. The continuity down the ages, right down to our own time, of this vision of the sages is one of the most impressive features of world history. Other things in world history may come and go, but the visions of the sages of the Upaniṣads remain for ever.

So we find that this theme, India’s spiritual heritage, is one that is dear to the hearts of men and women in both East and West. In my travels in various countries, this is the thing that impressed me most–this response of the human mind everywhere to India’s spiritual heritage. Going beyond all other considerations, whether of geography, history, or political and economic systems, is the appeal of this Indian message to the human heart. There is one India which, like other nations, has its political, social, economic, and other limitations; there is, however, another India, unlimited in range and scope, which has borne witness to the reality of the highest in man and nature, which has bequeathed to the world visions of human glory and greatness. It is these visions

which can well form the sheet anchor of man's collective and indi-

vidual existence in the modern world.

The tremendous response which Swami Vivekananda's utter-

ances roused in the West was not an isolated or freakish event in

history. The modern world has been in search of universal values

for some centuries. There are today the world over, including the

communist countries, as I myself experienced, an increasing num-

ber of people, including young people, who respond to the philoso-

phical and spiritual heritage of India when they get a chance to

hear or know about it. This message of India has nothing credal,

nothing dogmatic or sectarian about it, for it speaks in terms of

man's development, his progress, his achievement of the highest

excellence. It is just this that the world is waiting for. In Czechoslo-

vakia, people told me that their inherited idea of religion and phi-

losophy had been quite different, and that they had felt greatly

impressed with the way the Vedānta expressed the idea of man's

development of total excellence. This idea has nothing parochial

about it; it is not tied down to any particular credal or social or

political expression, but is universal and human. They were very

much impressed with these ideas, and their response was immediate.

It is my sad experience that the world knows very little of

this aspect of Indian thought. In fact, even in India itself, people

do not yet realize what treasures there are in their own heritage.

Yet we do not speak of our spiritual heritage merely as a national

heritage, as a matter of national glory. When we speak of these

things it is the glory of man as man that becomes the theme.

Man in India has achieved certain greatnesses, he has scaled great

heights of experience, and he has left these as a legacy for the

rest of humanity. We do not claim a copyright for them, for the

great achievements of man in one place are the achievements of

man everywhere. Today we hear much about man climbing

Mount Everest and other high peaks. India has climbed the heights

of experience and of greatness, and this is her legacy to the whole

world, a legacy which has nothing parochial or narrow about it,

but which speaks of the highest attainments of the human mind,

of human thought, of man's total excellence.

The Challenge of Human Experience

The long line of evolution through which life has passed has

revealed to man great visions of beauty, of strength,

of power, of greatness. India carried these forward to their highest levels of expression. India asked, ages ago, 'What is the highest excellence of man?' This question was tackled by her with a thoroughness which is very impressive. Man, endowed with a body, with the senses, with various capacities, has yet to rise to the point of his highest excellence, which he has in a small measure even in his very childhood. The achievement of this highest excellence is the product of a converging life endeavour; it is education and religion in one. India tackled this fundamental problem very early in her cultural history through a creative minority of sages and thinkers. The results of their investigations into this problem have come down to us in that immortal literature, the Upaniṣads. This literature is immortal because its theme is immortal. Man's supreme excellence, say the Upaniṣads, consists in transcending his limitations of the senses. We have transcended many things. Our animal ancestry we have transcended to some extent in this human psycho-physical organism, but this is not the last, nor the highest, achievement. Even man's technical achievements up to date do not touch a fringe of his total possibilities; in spite of these intellectual developments, he has still about him and in him much of the primeval evolutionary slime; he has to shed much of his animal ancestry. He represents a great advance in evolution, but evolution has still greater heights to scale in him and through him. The present state is only a passing phase; man is not yet; he has to surpass himself and achieve still higher levels of expression.

The Upaniṣads took up this challenge, the challenge of human evolution, of deeper levels of human experience, and they forged ahead to scale the peaks of thought and experience. They gave us visions of man's true excellence as consisting in the realization of his immortal divine nature. This is the theme of the Upaniṣads, and this theme they have imparted to a whole cultural experiment, for it became the theme of Indian culture as well. In our time, this theme found glorious expression in Sri Ramakrishna. There is a continuity from the Upaniṣads to Sri Ramakrishna, and that continuity is one of the most impressive aspects of world history. No culture can be continuous in historical expression unless it has kept alive within itself the vision of the eternal and the imperishable. Only when a culture raises its edifice on the rock bottom

of experience, when it has seen and touched the fundamentals

of life, only then does it succeed in ensuring its unity and con-

tinuity; then it becomes a beacon light, inspiring human life age

after age.

This is how we view the history of India; India tackled life

from various angles. Many people have a wrong notion that Indian

thought tackled only the idea of man as a religious aspirant, search-

ing -or the secret of other-worldly or transcendental values. But

that is not correct. We find that the Indian nation experimented

with and developed all aspects of life, individual and collective:

social organization, political systems, positive sciences, arts and

literature, and various forms of happy, joyous living. The history

of India reveals that there was no lack of emphasis on a life of

joy; the life of the citizen is to be a happy one from every point

of view.

But along with this, another development of thought took place

which, starting as a critique of all relativistic views of man and

the universe, reached its development in the vision of the One

behind the many, and its consummation in the vision of the One

in the many, the One as the many. Having achieved a modicum

of security and welfare in the social field, the creative minds of

the community began to forge ahead, asking more and more fun-

damental questions. Is this psycho-social individual, the psycho-

physical being, the last stage in evolution? Or can it evolve into

something higher still? Of course, these questions were the pro-

duct of the creative thinking of a few people only, those who had

the capacity, the flair, for this type of adventure. It is only a

few gifted minds who, in any given society, participate in the quest

for fundamental truth; and these may belong to any strata of so-

ciety. As we turn the pages of the Upaniṣads, we come across,

among its creative thinkers, men, women, and children, intellec-

tuals, kings, and common men. What impresses us is the persist-

ence with which these thinkers ask this one question: What is per-

fection? What is the highest level of human existence? Endowed

with clarity of mind and purity of living, these thinkers achieved

the answer to this question through a life of self-discipline and me-

ditation; and in beautiful expositions, impressive dialogues, and fine

snatches of poetry they bequeathed it to posterity. This is what

has made this literature immortal.

30

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

The True Nature of Man

Romain Rolland, in his book, The Life of Ramakrishna, writes (Sixth Edition, p. 13):

'The man whose image I here evoke was the consummation of two thousand years spiritual life of three hundred million people.'

That a man like Sri Ramakrishna (A.D. 1836-1886) could appear in our time and live such a glorious life is entirely due to the fact of this continuity of India's spiritual tradition. It is a perennial river, flowing down the ages. Many of us, perhaps, do not know it. Many of us, perhaps, have not been able to take advantage of it. For some it is too lofty a theme. But all who hear about it look up to it in wonder and in admiration. There is a verse in the Bhagavad-Gītā (II. 29) which says:

Āścaryavat paśyati kaścidenaṁ

āścaryavat vadati tathaiva cānyah;

Āścaryavat cainam anyaḥ śṛṇoti

śrutvāpyenaṁ veda na caiva kaścit—

'Some look upon this Ātman as a wonder, some speak of it as a wonder, some hear of it as a wonder, but, in spite of all this, few truly know this Truth, the eternal glory of man!'

What, then, is this 'eternal glory of man'? It is his inborn divine nature, birthless, deathless, pure, and holy. He is not the body, nor the senses; these are but the instruments of his manifestation and action in the spatio-temporal world. He is the limitless One expressing itself through the little finite forms of body and mind. This is the true nature of man. This is not a mere philosophical concept, but a realized fact. All sensitive minds are inspired by these ideas. They inspired people at the time when the Upaniṣads were composed; they inspired people a thousand years later; and today, after three or four thousand years, they still inspire us. Neither the phenomenal progress of science and technology, nor the wealth and power of the modern world, has been able to reduce the relevancy of these ideas of the Upaniṣads; they have only increased it. The world is seeking for precisely this spiritual growth for man; it is the only means of breaking through the stagnation which has come upon the human mind. 'The human mind has lost its bearings in the delusion of wealth and power', pramādyantam vittamohena mūḍham (Kaṭha Upaniṣad, II. 6). Continued stagnation means death. So the Upaniṣads give us their gospel of hope for man through their grand theme: Man

shall have wealth; man shall have power; man shall have all this;

but he shall not get lost in any one of these. These are the means,

not the end; he shall break through the crust of experience, and

realize the Ātman, his divine Self, which is Sat-Cit-Ānanda, Exist-

ence-Knowledge-Bliss. Thus do the Upaniṣads show us the way

to creative living and life fulfilment.

Creative living is a beautiful term, but what is 'creative'?

Merely doing the same things over and over again does not indi-

cate creativity. The body, the senses, the nervous system, their

recurring excitements and titillations, do not make for creative

living. Some time or other we have to break through the prison

wall of body and mind. Then we reach true creativity, and it is this

type of creativity that the Upaniṣads represent. That is why the

Upaniṣads are inspiring to the modern man and woman.

Those who are modern fall into two categories. First, there

are those who are modern simply because they use modern ameni-

ties. That is the ordinary meaning of the word 'modern'. But

there is another meaning, a more profound meaning, to this word.

In this second meaning the modern man is he who is nourished

on the spirit of science, who is alert of mind and on the track

of truth, who has the capacity to question, 'to seek, ask, and knock'

as Jesus expresses it. That man is modern who is inquisitive,

who has a passion for truth and the power of rational investiga-

tion, who never takes things for granted but always strives to get

at the heart of things; his heart constantly asks, 'What next? What

next?' Such a modern mind is the mind that is closest to the spirit

of the Upaniṣads. For in the Upaniṣads too there is this atmos-

phere of alertness, this mood of constant seeking, a deep passion

for truth, a constant desire to forge ahead and not take things

for granted in a complacent spirit. It is here that you find the

close kinship between the Upaniṣads and the modern spirit.

So we find today that scientific thinkers, those who continual-

ly seek for deeper vistas of truth, those who strive to take life to

higher levels of expression, when they become acquainted with

the literature of the Upaniṣads, they become charmed, fascinated.

Swami Vivekananda (A.D. 1863-1902), referring to the Upaniṣads,

said (Complete Works, Vol. III, Eighth Edition, p. 110):

'If there is one word in the English language to express the effect

which the literature of India produces upon mankind, it is this one

word fascination.'

The reason for that fascination is precisely that they draw the mind up to something higher, purer, loftier. The Upaniṣads send out a clarion call to lead us ever upward and onward. In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (III. 14) we read: Uttiṣṭhata! Jāgrata! Prāpya varān nibodhata! 'Arise! Awake! And enlighten yourself by approaching the great ones!'

The Moving Power of the Spirit

This is the clarion call which the modern man needs to carry him forward out of the present stagnation. This fact of stagnation is a recurring phenomenon in world history. Civilizations sometimes get stuck up in the mud of finite values, and become stagnant; and history tells us that there is only one way by which to overcome the deadlock. No political methods, nor social, economic, or financial manipulations can help to redeem man from such crises; these can be temporary palliatives at best; but they cannot raise a culture or a civilization from its stagnation and impart to it creative dynamism. The malady is a spiritual maladay; its remedy also lies in the spiritual sphere. There is only one method of effecting a remedy, and that is to bring the power of the indwelling spirit to bear upon the psycho-physical organism, as also upon the psycho-social organism, the machine of our collective life.

This is what India did again and again. Repeatedly in Indian history we get evidence of the expressions of this power of the spirit to move a static world and make it dynamic. In the Bhagavad-Gītā (IV. 8), for example, Śrī Kṛṣṇa says: Dharmasaṁsthāpanārthāya saṁbhavāmi yuge yuge—'I come age after age to establish righteousness in the world.' When life becomes static, and moves in the narrowest circle possible, then God, the indwelling Spirit in man and nature, comes once again and imparts a new dynamism to the social process which then develops a new assimilative power and manifests fresh energy of movement.

Another illustration of the power of the spirit to make the world dynamic may be seen in the example and words of Buddha (563-483 B.C.), who appeared about a thousand years after Śrī Kṛṣṇa. At Sarnath, in his first discourse after his enlightenment, Buddha spoke of his mission as the 'setting in motion of the wheel of dharma'. The very title of the discourse is significant: Dharmacakrapravartana Sūtra—Discourse on the setting in motion

of the wheel of dharma. Dharma is conceived as a wheel, and

human life, collective as well as individual. is conceived as a cart

on wheels. A wheel gets stuck in a muddy road and will not

move until a strong shoulder comes and pushes it. So a society or

an individual may get stuck in the little things and trivial enjoy-

ments of the iody and the senses. History tells us that the Roman

society decayed and fell for just this reason, and we find similar

periods in our own history also. Lost in enjoyment and pleasure,

and losing sight of the higher values of life, society stagnates and

dies. So Buddha, in his discourse at Sarnath, said: 'Come, let :s put

our shqlders to the wheel, and make it move.' The very concept

of the wheel implies something in motion. Buddha said: 'I have

come to set the wheel of dharma in motion.' Śrī Krṣna said:

'I have come to set in motion the power of dharma.' And it is

just this that has happened again and again in Indian history. What

did Sri Ramakrishna do in our time? Apparently he did nothing;

he lived a quiet life, outside the political and social movements of

his time. But the energies that he created and released from his

inner life powerfully influenced men and movements around him,

and bid fair, at the not too distant future, to transform the modern

world itself. He lived the life of the spirit in all its intensity and

extensity, and showed the authenticity of man's spiritual life. He'

demonstrated the true purpose and function of religion, and the

harmony between the different religions, and showed that there is

no need to quarrel and fight in the name of religion. Quarrelling

and fighting make of religion a sham. But religion is not a sham.

It invites man to the highest adventure in life, the realization of

his true freedonı, which is the freedom of the spirit.

Physically and socially, man is not free; he is conditioned by

external and internal factors. Freedom is in our spiritual na-

ture. That is our true nature, immortal and divine, and we must

realize it in life. This alone is true progress, development; this

alone is true religion. 'This great idea Sri Ramakrishna lived, and,

in so living, imparted such a power to it that, when other people

received this idea, they received that power as well. They became

convinced of the authenticity of this idea because Sri Ramakrishna

had actually lived it.

This is the way by which a static society becomes dynamic

and is made to move again. As blood flows through a healthy

body, so through the body politic must flow the blood of spiritual

life. A great teacher comes, and with him comes great power, a

new influx of energy. We start moving once again, and the stag-

nation begins to vanish. Once more man begins to seek the higher

values of life. In the wake of the great teacher come creative in-

dividuals who ask deep questions; and strive to discover the an-

swers for themselves: What is the true nature of man? How can

man realize it? What is his destiny and how can he achieve it?

Is spirituality the prerogative of only a few, select, gifted individ-

uals? Or is it the prerogative of everyone?

The Upaniṣads boldly proclaim that spirituality is the prerog-

ative of every individual. This Ātman, the divine, the immortal,

is the Self of every man and woman and child. It is the true na-

ture of man It is also the true nature of all animals,

but animals cannot realize it. It is only man with

his unique psycho-physical system, aided by the psycho-social en-

vironment created by himself in the course of his evolution, that

has the capacity to realize this truth. Man is specially fitted for

this great adventure. He has certain advantages, and when he

starts using these advantages he is able to rise to the highest level

of spiritual life. The Upaniṣads tell us that wealth and power

are not the highest glory of man. The Upaniṣads do not condemn

man's pursuit of worldly wealth and power; they never condemn

any values pursued by man. Only they say, 'There is some-

thing better and higher than these'. The Upaniṣads ever urge us

to go on to the realization of this something better within us. Sri

Ramakrishna, in one of his parables, tells the story of a woodcutter

who, going into the forest to cut wood, was told by a holy man

to go forward. Following this advice, in due course the wood-

cutter came across, first, a sandalwood forest, then, a silver mine,

then, a gold mine, and, going deeper still into the forest, he found

at last a diamond mine, and became exceedingly rich. Telling this

story, Sri Ramakrishna said, 'Therefore I say that, in whatever

stage of life you may be, you will realize better and purer things

if only you go deeper and deeper into yourself'.

The Need for Broad-based Education

If Indian culture is strong today, even in this highly advanced

age of science and technology, it is because India has not forgotten

this teaching. The way forward for India today is the assimilation

into her own ancient culture of the best that is in modern western

culture. But India can do this only if she is conscious of her own

heritage, if she has become inspired ana strengthened by that heri-

tage. The source of this heritage, so far as literature goes, is

the Upaniṣads, and a study of the Upaniṣads is one of the most

rewarding studies for man today, in both East and West.

As far as India is concerned, this study will bring to her chil-

dren an acquaintance with those basic values which have shaped

their history and which are sustaining them even today. We, per-

haps, are inclined to take those values for granted, just like the

air we breathe. But culture is not like that. It requires educa-

tion; it requires assimilation. It is this education in and assimilation

of their own cultural values that will give to Indian men and

women of this age the power to handle the forces of the modern

world, to tame and harness them in the service of human happi-

ness and welfare within India and outside. And so the need for

every educated citizen of this country is to understand and assim-

ilate the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā; not merely to study

them as literature, or even as philosophy, but to enter into their

spirit and to breathe in unison with their breath.

When we become strong in our own inheritance, we shall feel

the strength to take in also the legacy which the West, from the

time of the Greeks to the modern age, has left for us. For today,

legacies are not parochial. Today, every cultural legacy is a hu-

man legacy for the whole world. The world has become so small

that all provincial barriers are anachronisms today. Every achieve-

ment in any part of the world becomes a legacy for the whole

world. So the whole human heritage has to become the subject of

education for every individual today. A boy or girl going to school

and college in India today studies the western heritage through

science, sociology, and various other subjects; thus our boys and

girls become the recipients of the beșt thought of the western world.

In the same way, the education of the western boy or girl must

be broadened to include the rich cultural heritage of India. It is

broad-based education of this kind that will solve the problems of

the modern world. Provincialism, which has done so much harm

to the world in the past, will thus be completely eliminated, and

the world turned in the direction of global unity.

As far as India is concerned, we have been fortunate to have

had thinkers, and some of the greatest of them appeared in this

modern age, who have placed before us this broad objective. From

Raja Rammonun Roy (A.D. 1774-1833) to Swami Vivekananda,

each one of these modern thinkers has been proud of India's heritage and yet has told us, in all humility, to sit at the feet of other

nations of the modern world and learn the legacy which is theirs to give.

These great leaders of modern India will not permit us to be parochial. They did not ask us to be proud only of our own heritage;

they asked us to open our minds to receive the best that the world has to give. They also told us that the capacity to assimilate modern western culture is directly proportionate to our prior assimilation of our own culture. Without a proper understanding of our

own culture, we shall never be able to enter the soul of another culture, nor profit from it. This is, unfortunately, what we see happening today. Our capacity to assimilate the best of western

culture is very little, because most of us, through our faulty education, did not get the opportunity to understand our own culture,

to be acquainted with the great thoughts behind our own culture. Our education is largely cut off from the currents of our own cultural inheritance. The nation is trying to remedy this; but it is a

fact that an educated citizen of India today is mostly ignorant of the fundamentals of his own culture, of his own traditions. I

found this to be true of large numbers of Indian students I came across in foreign countries, and I have heard from several western friends, and I have also read in newspaper articles written by

western well-wishers of India, that Indian students and Indian diplomatic personnel in countries abroad are most inadequately equipped in their knowledge of India and her culture. In the absence of

the strength which comes from an assimilation of one's cultural inheritance, when we try to take in western culture, what is taken in proves to be only the cheaper side of that culture, and not the

strength that is behind that culture. That strength we can touch only on the basis of our own strength.

This defect in our education must be remedied. As far as our schools and colleges are concerned, it will take some time for us to remedy it. But the general citizen can remedy this defect for

himself by opening his mind and heart to the rich legacy which is his in his own literary and artistic inheritance. If the Upaniṣads had not been written, if the sages had simply thought these

thoughts and passed away, it is probable that the atmosphere of India would still have contained those thoughts, but most of us would not have been able to come into touch with them. A gifted

soul like Sri Ramakrishna is able to open his mind to the wonderful vibrations of thought which the seers have left behind, but ordinary people cannot do that. Fortunately for us, and for all humanity, the mighty thoughts of these sages were written down, enabling you and me to receive this communication from them. The inheritance of culture comes through communication, through the language of symbols, literary and artistic. Man can communicate his experience to coming generations, and this is how he acquires culture, the cumulative effect of inherited tradition. Through communication and transmission, a culture goes on growing and developing, getting richer and richer in the process. Today we have the opportunity to live in the atmosphere in which the sages lived by studying the great literature which they have left as a legacy to us. Reading the Upaniṣads today, we also may have an experience of 'sitting close to those teachers', which is the literal meaning of the term upaniṣad.

A Message of Fearlessness

The Upaniṣads stand in a class by themselves. They are immortal literature, and so we call them the Śrutis, the truths realized in transcendental experience beyond the reach of the senses and the sense-bound mind, but realizable by the pure mind. These truths are universal and perennial and will always inspire humanity. Today, the opportunity has come through modern means of communication, modern methods of transmitting ideas, to effect the widest diffusion of this immense fund of inspiration. Before Swami Vivekananda's time, very few people knew about the Vedānta, about the philosophy of the Upaniṣads. He took it upon himself to proclaim these truths from the housetops, both in the East and in the West (Complete Works, Vol. III, ibid., p. 238):

'Let me tell you that we want strength, strength, and every time strength. And the Upaniṣads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong, energized through them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds, and all sects, to stand on their own feet and be free. Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom are the watchwords of the Upaniṣads.'

Śaṅkarācārya (A.D. 788-820) was the first teacher in historic times to make the Upaniṣads popular in this country. Before that, only a few select people, largely of the monastic community, knew the glory of the Upaniṣads. But Śaṅkarācārya opened up the

58

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANISADS

treasures to householders and to all citizens. It will do them good,

he said. But still the Upaniṣads reached only a small minority.

Today, however, thanks largely to the work of Swami Viveka-

nanda, they are the property of one and all. They are there, in

almost every Indian language, as also in English and several other

foreign languages, for all who care to take them and be nourished

by them. Proclaims Vivekananda (ibid., p. 225):

'The truths of the Upaniṣads are before you. Take them up,

live up to them, and the salvation of India will be at hand.'

The Upaniṣads, however, require close study. A newspaper is

also a kind of literature; but it is read in the morning and thrown

away in the evening, and thus stands at the lowest level of the

literary spectrum. The Upaniṣads are not like that; they stand at

the highest end of that spectrum. They must be read again and

again; every step in growth of mental maturity and clearness

brings us closer and closer to the heart of this great

literature. The more we read them, the more we get out of

them, because their words come from the depths of the heart.

'Where words come out from the depth of truth', says Tagore in his

Gitāñjali. The words of the Upaniṣads come out from the depth

of truth. The sages experienced Truth; they saw something pro-

found in man and nature, and they tried to capture and communi-

cate this vision in snatches of poetry. The sublime poetry of the

Upaniṣads has moved the hearts of thinkers and poets from ancient

times to the present. Take this verse from the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad

(II. ii. 7):

Yaḥ sarvajñaḥ sarvavid yasyaiṣa mahimā bhuvi—

But is His glory confined only to nature outside, nature spread

out in space and time? No, says the Upaniṣad; His glory is special-

ly manifest in man himself, in the profound depths of his being:

Divye brahmapure hyeṣa vyomnyātmā pratiṣṭhitah—

His presence is felt through speech and mind and thought:

Manomayaḥ prāṇaśarīraṇetā pratipṭhito'nne hrdayam sannidhāya—

OUR SPIRITUAL HERITAGE

53

the human system functions in and through Him; and, present in

the heart, He animates the physical body of man.'

Then the verse concludes with a beautiful, joyous note:

Tadvijñānene paripaśyanti dhīrā

ānandarūpam amṛtaṁ yadvibhāti—

'The wise ones realize Him everywhere, inside as well as outside,

Him whose form is bliss and immortality and whose glory over-

flows as the visible universe.'

The word dhīra in the text means 'the wise one' and indicates

a combination of intelligence and courage. The Upaniṣads speak

of man's greatness in two forms: first, his intelligence by which he

understands the facts of the outer and inner worlds; second, his

courage, heroism, by which he not merely knows but also achieves

truth and excellence. Mere intelligence is not enough; courage is

also necessary. Their combination makes for the highest character

where the power of knowledge becomes transmuted into the energy

of vision.

The capacity to scale the Everest of experience, to scale the

highest peak of truth, comes to intelligence only when it blazons

forth as courage. He is the dhīra, the wise one; he alone is entitled

to realize the Ātman. What is the form of that realization? Pari-

paśyanti, 'he realizes Him everywhere', inside as well as outside,

in man as well as in nature. The whole of nature becomes ablaze

with divinity to his purified vision. He realizes Him as ānanda-

rūpam amṛtam yadvibhāti, 'of the form of bliss and immortality

which has overflown as nature, as the visible universe'. The uni-

verse becomes transforned into waves and waves of bliss; into

waves of bliss, ānandaharī, and waves of beauty, śundaryalaharī,

as expressed by Śaṅkarācārya. The Ātman shines in man and na-

ture, in the sun and moon and stars, in every particle of dust.

Now here is a vision captured in a snatch of poetry. This is just

a sample; there are scores of such in the Upaniṣads.

This beautiful poetry of the Upaniṣads is the vehicle of the

most profound thought. That thought cannot be penetrated easily.

A superficial reading will not suffice; constant study and constant

probing are required. In this study we are not studying a bit

of nature outside of ourselves, like physics or chemistry. We are

studying nature as expressed in our personality, and searching for

the very core of that personality; our study relates to something

very closely connected with ourselves, our development, fulfilment, our total realization. Every sentence in the Upaniṣads has something corresponding to the deep-felt urges in ourselves. Śaṅkarā-cārya tells us in his Brahma-Sūtra bhāṣya that Brahman, the Absolute, which is the theme of the Upaniṣads and the starting point of the Brahma-Sūtras, is not an abstract truth remote from us and from our daily lives, but is a given datum of experience as the inner Self of all.

So there is great need for us to study this legacy, to understand it. The whole country will become galvanized with a new energy, a new resolve, a new discipline, even if only a little of the wisdom of the Upaniṣads can come into our lives. We read in the Bhagavad-Gītā (II. 40): Svalpamapyasya dharmasya trāyate ma-hato bhayāt—‘Even a little of this dharma will save us from great fear.’ Here is the message of fearlessness, of strength, of growth, development, and realization. Man must rise higher and higher and reach out towards perfection which is the unity of all-encompassing love and knowledge. This is the message, the clarion call of the Upaniṣads—a call to dynamic action in the pursuit of Truth and total excellence, a call to carry forward evolution to the level of total life fulfilment through spiritual realization. What a hopeful message it is!

Universal Man

The Upaniṣads summon man to a constant struggle to gain the highest, the struggle to achieve the eternal, the permanent, the immortal imbedded in life and experience. Other races and other cultures have spoken of man as a dominator of external nature, as a creator of values in the context of man’s collective life. In Greek thought, for example, we have the concept of the Promethean spirit, the power of the human spirit to overcome external obstacles and establish man’s supremacy over the forces of nature and, if necessary, over the forces of other human beings as well. The great defect in this line of thought, when pursued by itself, is that it does not carry all humanity together. It is based on the concept of man dominating everything external to himself; it does not stress the need to chasten and overcome the ego which results from such domination of his external environment. Man dominating his environment is a valid concept; it is a form of human excellence. The West has carried it to the highest level of expression; and we in India stand in great need of education in this excellence.

lence on a nation-wide scale. But this is not the highest that man

is capable of; Indian thought will not accord it the highest point

in the scale of human excellence. That point involves the tran-

scendence of the ego and the emergence of the universal within

man. When man achieves supreme self-transcendence he finds that

there is nobody to dominate. He finds that he is one with all, for

he has realized the Self in all.

In other words, he discovers himself as the Universal Man,

integrated within and without, and himself pulsating in the heart

of man and nature. The liberation of this Universal Man out of

the common men and women that we are is the aim of the Upa-

niṣads. It is this that makes the Upaniṣads of such contemporary

interest and importance today. Universal Man is the theme of all

progressive thinking today, and so the Upaniṣads stand in the fore-

front of all progressive thought in the modern world. Man, who

has been completely submerged in nationalistic, racial, sectarian, or

various other forms of limiting milieus, needs to be redeemed.

Swami Vivekananda shared with modern man the glory of this

Vedāntic message and showed what blessings it could confer on

modern society. He also taught how to make this philosophy prac-

tical in workaday life. So a study of this profound literature, the

Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā, an intelligent study of the philos-

ophy imbedded in it—the Vedānta—in relation to contemporary

thought and needs, will prove a rewarding experience for men and

women everywhere.

TWO

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD–1

The Īśā Upaniṣad, which is always regarded as first among the Upaniṣads, has special significance. This is that the very first verse of this Upaniṣad is, as it were, a proposition, or statement, that is substantiated and authenticated by every other Upaniṣad. Moreover, the philosophy contained in this great declaration of the opening verse became, later, the philosophic background of the great synthesis which found expression in the Bhagavad-Gītā. There is, in fact, a very close spiritual kinship between the Īśā Upaniṣad and the Bhagavad-Gītā, which was, in turn, described by Śaṅkarācārya in the beautiful introduction with which he prefaces his commentary on the Gītā, as 'the collected essence of the meaning of all the Vedas', samastavedārtha-sāra-saṅgraha-bhū̄tam. The Bhagavad-Gītā itself proclaims through the colophon at the end of each of its chapters that it seeks to bring out the ethical and spiritual implications of the profound metaphysics of the Upaniṣads.

All the great thinkers of India, ancient and modern, have received inspiration from the Īśā Upaniṣad. So we shall study this Upaniṣad first and then take the second, the Kena Upaniṣad, and later the third, the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, before taking up the study of the Bhagavad-Gītā. But our main study will be the Bhagavad-Gītā, because, as Swami Vivekananda points out, it is the book that contains the philosophy for this age. It does not expound any exclusive creed or dogma, it does not plead for a sectarian view, but it gives an insight into life, into all aspects of man's experience, and teaches the technique by which life can be lived at its highest and best. It breathes the spirit of tolerance and universality. A study of the Bhagavad-Gītā is therefore of the utmost practical significance, and all, whether of the East or the West, who seek will receive from it the highest spiritual benefit. The understanding of the Bhagavad-Gītā will become easier when we know its spiritual and philosophical background in the Upaniṣads.

When we remember how ancient the Upaniṣads are, it strikes us as remarkable that they have not lost their appeal to the human mind, in spite of all the changes that have taken place in human society, in its views, attitudes, and values during these three or more millennia of history. The reason for this is that the Upani-

ṣads deal with fundamental matters, those things that affect life

móst profoundly. Indeed, the Upaniṣads seem to have touched the

very mainspring of life and experience, and they have set in motion

a thought energy which has the power to transform human life in

any epoch. The words of the Upaniṣads are great music, the tunes

of which have the power to fascinate the hearts of all sensitive peo-

ple, century after century. Every one who studies the Upaniṣads

reverently, and in a seeking mood, will realize for himself or her-

guage, direct and deep, poetic and sublime. A spiritual seeker who

reads the Upaniṣads will feel that he is dealing with a theme that

is very close to his life and destiny, a reality which is in himself

as well as in the world outside. The deep pulsations of that reality

have been caught up in the beautiful music of the Upaniṣads.

What is this World?

Pūrṇamadah pūrṇamidam

pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate:

Pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya

pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate.

Om śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ—

'The invisible (Brahman) is the Full: the visible (the world)

too is the Full. From the Full (Brahman), the Full (the visible

universe) has come. The Full (Brahman) remains the same, even

after the Full (the visible universe) has come out of the Full

(Brahman).'

The Sanskrit verse which I recited just now is the 'Peace In-

vocation' which precedes the Īśā and other Upaniṣads belonging to

the Śukla Yajur-Veda. This verse is very profound in meaning

and significance; it concentrates within a few lines the entire thought

of the Upaniṣads. It reveals at once the grasp, the sweep, the scope

of that thought: Pūrṇamadah pūrṇamidam—'That is the Full or

Whole; this is the Full or Whole.' In the technical language of

Vedānta, the words 'that' and 'this' have special meanings. Idam,

this, is a demonstrative pronoun, involving an effort to point out

something which is within the grasp of sense experience. It stands

for this manifested universe of space and time and change. As soon

as the human mind becomes aware of the world around it, it be-

comes also seized with the question as to what is the world that

so surrounds it. What is this world that impinges on us all the

time? The human mind constantly receives information about it

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

through the five senses; it is intrigued with these data and wants to know all about them; and it formulates to itself the question, lispingly or clearly, What is this world of our everyday experience?

This question marks the beginning of all knowledge. In the words of William James, to a new-born baby the world is 'a buzzing booming confusion'. It is this 'buzzing booming confusion' that the child tries to understand, little by little, first in a rudimentary way and, later, as a youth and a man, in a clearer way, by logical and scientific analysis and synthesis. This totality of the external world in its impact upon the human mind is what is meant by the word idam.

How, then, shall we answer this questioning of the mind? Philosophical thought as developed in the East and the West provides various answers to the question, answers which come from various levels of thought. Some of the answers found in the Upaniṣads are echoed today in modern scientific thought. Suppose we answer the question by the word 'nature'. We may say that this world is a transformation of nature, of some primordial energy constituting nature, or, as the British astronomer Fred Hoyle tells us, of some cosmic dust. These very answers are to be found in the Upaniṣads also. But the Upaniṣads treat them as preliminary answers, or, better still, as limited answers, prādeśamātram, given purely from a limited point of view, namely, the external. This was the prevalent nineteenth-century view and is still patronized by several scientists, in spite of the revolutionary advances of twentieth-century scientific thought.

The other answer to the question comes from a deeper level, and involves another point of view, namely, the internal. Twentieth-century science is slowly becoming acquainted with this point of view through the contributions of a few outstanding physicists, astronomers, and biologists. Among these, I would like to refer to the conclusions of the palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Chardin asks (The Phenomenon of Man, with an Introduction by Julian Huxley, Collins, London, p. 52):

'Up to now has science ever troubled to look at the world other than from without?'

And he proceeds (ibid., p. 55):

'In the eyes of the physicist, nothing exists legitimately, at least up to now, except the without of things. The same intellectual attitude is still permissible in the bacteriologist, whose cultures (apart from substantial difficulties) are treated as laboratory

reagents. But it is still more difficult in the realm of plants. It tends to become a gamble in the case of a biologist studying the behaviour of insects or coelenterates. It seems merely futile with regard to the vertebrates. Finally, it breaks down completely with man, in whom the existence of a within can no longer be evaded, because it is the object of a direct intuition and the substance of all knowledge.'

Teilhard de Chardin continues (ibid., p. 56):

'It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, an "interior" appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another, this "interior" should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double aspect to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time--in the same way, for instance, as it is granular: co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things.'

Both Indian thought and modern scientific thought accept a fundamental unity behind the world of variety. That basic unitary reality evolves into all that we see around us in the world. This view is a few thousand years old in India; we find it in the Sāṁkhyan and Vedāntic schools of Indian thought; and they expound it very much on the lines followed by modern thought. In his address to the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893, Swami Vivekananda said (Complete Works, Vol. I, Eleventh Edition, p. 13):

'All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language, and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.'

The Sāṁkhya school uses two terms to represent Nature or Pradhāna: Prakṛti denoting Nature in its unmodified state, and Vikṛti denoting Nature in its modified state. The Vedānta similarly speaks of Brahman as the inactive state, and Māyā or Śakti as the active state of one and the same primordial non-dual reality. The Brahman of the Vedānta is the unity of both the spiritual and the non-spiritual, the non-physical and the physical aspects of the universe, unlike Nature in modern scientific thought which is only the unity of the physical aspects of the universe. So, as the first answer to the question, What is the world? We get the child's answer in his growing knowledge of the discrete entities and events of the outer world and their hazy inter-connections. The second

66

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

answer is the product of scientific thought, which gives us the knowl-

edge of the one behind the many. All the entities and events of

the world are but the modifications or evolutions of one primordial

basic reality, be it nature, space-time, or cosmic dust.

Although modern scientific thought does not yet have a place

for any spiritual reality or principle, scientists like Chardin and

Julian Huxley are trying to find a proper place for the experience

of the spiritual in the scientific picture of the universe. When

this is achieved, the scientific picture, which is close to Vedānta

already, will become closer still, and the synthesis of the knowl-

edge of the 'without' and the 'within' of things will give us the

total view of the universe. This is wisdom according to Vedānta,

whereas all partial views are just pieces of knowledge or informa-

tion.

Beyond Time and Space

The Upaniṣads deal with this 'within' of things. Theirs, in

fact, is the most outstanding contribution on this subject in the

human cultural legacy. They term this aspect of the reality of

things pratyak caitanya or pratyak ātman or pratyak tattva;

and they contain the fascinating account of the stages by which the

human mind rose from crude beginnings to clear, wholly spiritual

heights in the realization of this reality. The Upaniṣads also syn-

thesized the knowledge of the 'within' with the knowledge of the

'without', in a total comprehension of reality.

It is this total vision that finds expression in this verse. How

does the world look when we view it from the outside? We seek

an answer from the physical sciences. How does it look when we

view it from the inside? We seek an answer from the non-physical

sciences, including the science of religion. And philosophy, as un-

derstood in the Upaniṣadic tradition, is the synthesis of these two

answers: Brahmavidyā is sarvavidyāpratiṣṭhā, as the Muṇḍaka

Upaniṣad puts it, or kṣetrakṣetrajñayor jñānaṁ yat tat jñānaṁ

mataṁ mama-"The unified knowledge of the "without" and the

"within" of things is true knowledge according to Me', as Kṛṣṇa

says in the Gītā.

From this total viewpoint there is neither inside nor outside;

they are relative concepts depending upon some sort of a reference

point, e.g. the body; as such, they move within the framework of

relativity. Reality knows neither 'outside' nor 'inside'; it is ever

full. These relative concepts are helpful in our approach to the understanding of the total reality.

Thus we find that our knowledge of the manifold of experience, the idam, also involves something else, namely, the unity behind the manifold. This unity behind the manifold, which is not perceptible to the senses, is indicated by the term adah meaning 'that', indicating something far away, unlike the 'this' of sense experience. 'This' is the correlative of 'that'; 'this' is the changeable aspect of reality; 'that' is its unchangeable aspect. If 'this' refers to something given in sense experience, 'that' refers to something transcendental, beyond the experience of the senses. To say 'this' therefore also implies at the same time something that is beyond 'this'. 'This' is an effect; as such, it is visible and palpable; behind and beyond it lies the cause, the invisible and the impalpable. Adah, 'that', represents the invisible behind the visible, the transcendental behind the empirical, a something that is beyond time and space. In religion, this something is called 'God'. In philosophy, it is called Tat or adah, That, Brahman, the ultimate Reality, the cause, the ground, and the goal of the universe.

So, this verse first tells us that beyond and behind the manifested universe is the reality of Brahman, which is the fullness of pure Being; it then tells us about this world of becoming which, being nothing but Brahman, is also the 'Full'. From the point of view of the total Reality, it is all 'fullness' everywhere, in space-time as well as beyond space-time. Then the verse adds:

Pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate—'From the Fullness of Brahman has come the Fullness of the universe, leaving Fullness alone as the remainder.'

What, then, is the point of view or level from which the sentiments of this verse proceed? It is that of the total Reality, the Absolute and the Infinite, in which as I said earlier, the 'within' and 'without' of things merge. The Upaniṣads call it the ocean of saccidānanda, the unity of absolute existence, absolute awareness, and absolute bliss. Itself beyond all distinctions of time and space, it yet manifests itself through all such distinctions. To the purified vision of the Upaniṣadic sages, this whole universe appeared as the fullness of Being, which was, which is, and which shall ever be. In the Bhagavad-Gītā (VII. 26) Kṛṣṇa says:

Vedāham samatītani vartamānāni cārjuna; Bhāviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni mām tu veda na kaścana—

'I. O Arjuna, know the beings that are of the past, that are of the present, and that are to come in the future; but Me no one knows.'

That fullness of the true Me, says Kṛṣṇa, is beyond all these limited categories, such as space and time, cause and effect, and substance and attribute.

Striving for Fulfilment

That is the nature of Brahman; and the theme of the Upaniṣads is this Brahman. It is also the true nature of man; and a second theme of the Upaniṣads is therefore the achievement by man of his true nature, the fullness of his being, pūrṇatā. The word pūrṇatā, fullness, has a tremendous hold on the human mind. To speak of 'fullness' is to speak of fulfilment, integrality, wholeness; and these are words which express the deep aspirations of the human heart, aspirations which cannot be long suppressed. Every pulse of the human heart, every struggle of life in general, is towards fulfilment. Every step that we take in life has fulfilment for its goal, the urge to wholeness for its motive. This is a general feature of the universe; the drop strives to join the ocean; the fraction finds its wholeness in the integer; and man finds his fulfilment in God.

This interpretation of the whole phenomenon of existence finds powerful endorsement in the views of some of the most advanced biologists of today. In his opening essay on 'The Emergence of Darwinism' contributed to the first volume of the three volume publication entitled Evolution after Darwin, containing the proceedings of the Darwin Centennial Celebration Conference of Scientists held at the Chicago University in November 1959, Julian Huxley writes (The Evolution of Life: Its Origin, History, and Future, Vol. I of Evolution after Darwin, Edited by Sol Tax, University of Chicago Press, p. 21):

'In the light of our present knowledge, man's most comprehensive aim is seen not as mere survival, not as numerical increase, not as increased complexity of organization or increased control over his environment, but as greater fulfilment—the fuller realization of more possibilities by the human species collectively and more of its component members individually.'

Again, in his address to the final session of the Conference,

speaking on 'The Evolutionary Vision', he said (Issues in Evolution, Vol. III of Evolution after Darwin, pp. 251-59):

'Man's evolution is not biological but psychosocial; it operates by the mechanism of cultural tradition, which involves the cumulative self-reproduction and self-variation of mental activities and their products. Accordingly, major steps in the human phase of evolution are achieved by break-throughs to new dominant patterns of mental organization, of knowledge, ideas, and beliefs-ideological instead of physiological or biological organization....

'All dominant thought organizations are concerned with the ultimate, as well as with the immediate problems of existence or, I should rather say, with the most ultimate problems that the thought of the time is capable of formulating or even envisaging. They are all concerned with giving some interpretation of man, of the world which he is to live in, and of his place and role in that world-in other words, some comprehensible picture of human destiny and significance....

'Once we truly believe that man's destiny is to make possible greater fulfilment for more human beings and fuller achievement by human societies, utility in the customary sense becomes subordinate. Quantity of material production is, of course, necessary as the basis for the satisfaction of elementary human needs-but only up to a certain degree. More than a certain number of calories or cocktails or TV sets or washing machines per person is not merely unnecessary but bad. Quantity of material production is a means to a further end, not an end in itself.'

The achievement of human destiny cannot be left to be worked out by the blind and wasteful evolutionary processes of nature. Nature has taken half a billion years to achieve our present state; at this rate, evolution will take a few more billion years to evolve the perfect man, the fulfilled man. We shall have to wait, in the language of Tennyson, for that

'...far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves.'

Shall we, then, wait that long? Or shall we achieve it now? Shall we just float with the current of nature and achieve fulfilment as and when nature achieves it for us? Or shall we take our destiny from the hands of nature into our own and achieve it here and now? Julian Huxley tells us that man, with his intelligence and imagination, has the capacity to direct his evolution and quicken its pace in himself and in his environment. Says he (ibid., p. 252):

'It is only through possessing a mind that he has become the dominant portion of this planet and the agent responsible for its

future evolution; and it will be only by the right use of that mind that he will be able to exercise that responsibility rightly. He could all too readily be a failure in the job; he will succeed only if he faces it consciously and if he uses all his mental resources -of knowledge and reason, of imagination, sensitivity, and moral effort.'

These ideas are perfectly in tune with the temper and thought of the Upaniṣads. And the Upaniṣads hold a vital human legacy for the enrichment of modern thought and for the quickening of man's evolutionary pace towards total fulfilment. It is unfortunate that most modern scientists, including Huxley, are ignorant of this Indian legacy. They know the negative elements of that lagacy, not the positive ones. In his lecture referred to above, Huxley refers twice to the Indian legacy, but in both cases it is only to refer to what he learnt, during his travel in India, of a Hindu who killed his child at the altar of Kālī in order to propitiate that goddess. With the steady advance of Vedānta in the West, western scientists of a generation or two ahead may well become better acquainted with the lofty philosophic and spiritual thought of India; the West will then realize the depth of that legacy, its close kinship with modern thought, and its significance for the modern world.

Modern thought, as represented by men like Huxley, affirms, like Vedānta, the supremacy of mind over physical environment, of spirit over matter. This is the meaning of the biologists' assertion that from now onward man is the agent of evolution. But in this onward march of human evolution, the emphasis in modern thought is excessively on the manipulation of the external environment. Emphasis on the manipulation of the inner environment, which assumes greater importance in the higher stages of psycho-social evolution, is feeble and meagre; knowledge of the science and technique of the manipulation of this inner environment, which is the meaning of religion as understood in Indian thought, is elementary. Huxley acknowledges this when he says (ibid., 259-60):

'Althcugh it is to his mind that man owes both his present dominant position in evolution, and any advances he may have made during his tenure of that position, he is still strangely ignorant and even superstitious about it. The exploration of the mind has barely begun. It must be one of the main tasks of the coming era, just as was the exploration of the world's surface a few centuries ago. Psychological exploration will doubtless reveal as many surprises as did geographical exploration and will make available to our descendants all kinds of new possibilities of fuller and richer living.'

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD-1

71

This scientific exploration of the inner world has been the special activity of India during the millennia of her long history. The sages of the Upaniṣads, Kṛṣṇa, Buddha, Śaṅkara, and a galaxy of lesser spiritual stars in the past, and Ramakrishna and Vivekananda in our own day, are explorers, experimenters, and compassionate teachers of man in this very field. They are teachers of freedom—freedom from all bonds of nature, external or internal. They teach man how to fulfil himself through spiritual realization. They see freedom as the watchword of the cosmic process and the evolutionary drama; the spirit ever struggling to be free from the tentacles of matter, first by transforming it and later by transcending it. In the ringing words of Swami Vivekananda (Lecture on 'Māyā and Freedom', Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, p. 125):

'One curious fact present in the midst of all our joys and sorrows, difficulties and struggles, is that we are surely journeying towards freedom. The question was practically this: "What is this universe? From what does it arise? Into what does it go?" And the answer was: "In freedom it rises, in freedom it rests, and into freedom it melts away."

Man is the only creature who is aware of himself and of the vast energies lying within him. At the same time, he is also keenly aware of a sense of limitation within himself; he struggles to overcome this limitation, thus turning his inner being into a battlefield, into a veritable Kurukṣetra. It is this conflict between the sense of bondage and the sense of freedom that makes for all the charm and zest of life, its tragedies and comedies, its dreams and visions. In fact, it is the very meaning of life at the human level. But this conflict is not eternal, and man is not perpetually doomed to be bogged down in the mire of this unequal conflict. For in the course of this very conflict which, in the light and under the guidance of a spiritual philosophy, becomes also a school for his ethical and spiritual education, man gains in spiritual strength, in will and purpose and clarity of vision, and eventually achieves true freedom and bliss through the realization of his spiritual nature. Freedom is his birthright, and he now regains it after passing through the long travail of the evolutionary process.

The Dangers of Stagnation

Organisms other than human do not know this; they have not the organic capacity to formulate the problem for themselves, much

less to find a solution; they have to depend entirely on mother nature for it. Man alone has the capacity to experience bondage in a consistent manner and to struggle to overcome it. An animal cannot feel the pangs of emotional tensions, of joy and sorrow, elation and depression, love and hate, except as fleeting experiences. But man feels all these; he also asks questions about these through his developed reason, disciplines them through his will, and forges from them a rich and stable character and personality. And Vedānta tells us that herein lies the glory of man; he can surpass himself; and this in this very life, in this very person, and not at the end of nature's evolutionary process. Says the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (III. vii. 17):

Yaśca mūḍhatamo loke yaśca buddheḥ param gataḥ; Tāṁrubhau sukhamedhete kliśyatyantarito janah—

'Only two kinds of people are happy and free from tension, the utter fool and the one who has surpassed himself, gone beyond his mind (and attained the state of a paramahaṁsa). All people in between are in varying stages of tension and sorrow.'

These two opposites do not suffer tension, but all others, the vast majority of people, understand the nature of life to be tension. This tension, says Vedānta, is the organism's struggle for freedom; in the case of man, it is this tension that carries him forward. Awareness of bondage is the first step towards freedom. In politics, we see that, as long as a subject nation is unaware of its bondage, it is comparatively peaceful and free from inner tension; but it is also unaware of the joy of freedom. But a time comes when that subject nation feels that it is better to die than to be a slave, and from that moment it begins both its life of tension and its march towards freedom. We have seen this happen in the recent history of India.

In spiritual life, exactly the same thing happens. Many people are not even aware that they are bound. They are quite happy with the little pleasures they get in the sense world. There is pain too, but if they have even a little pleasure, that is compensation enough. Vedānta calls them saṁsārins, 'stagnant souls'. Sri Ramakṛishna asks us to beware of this stagnation in one of his beautiful parables by playing on the word saṁsāra, which means the world as well as worldliness. Every one of us is in saṁsāra,

the world of name and form, says Sri Ramakrishna; even God, when

He incarnates as man, lives in saṁsāra. But, says Sri Ramakrishna,

we may be in saṁsāra, but saṁsāra should not be in us. The boat

should be in water, but water should not be in the boat. Being

in saṁsāra does not make one a saṁsārin. It is when saṁsāra or

worldliness gets into us, when we look upon the world of name

and form as an end in itself, it is then that we become stagnant and

refuse to develop and progress. That is the standing danger in

human life, and it has to be avoided at all costs. Spiritual earnest-

ness and alertness are our best safeguards.

It is those who are entirely engrossed in this sense world who

do not strive; Vedānta calls it the state of spiritual blindness. They

live in darkness, and they are pleased with it. They are in bond-

age, and they feel at home in it. But the call of Vedānta is to effort

and struggle, a constant probing of life for deeper values, for higher

levels of life expression. 'Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal

is reached', says the Kaṭha Upaniṣad as freely paraphrased by

Swami Vivekananda.

This is the clarion call of the Upaniṣads to the human spirit.

Do not rest content; the best is yet to be. You may have achieved

something by way of wealth or power or knowledge; even to have

achieved this human birth is a great thing in the march of evolu-

tion. But do not be satisfied with the mere achievement of human

birth; for much of that man is still animal; much primeval evolu-

tionary slime clings to him yet. There is a Sanskrit saying which

expresses this modern idea: Manuṣyarūpeṇa mṛgāḥ caranti—'Mov-

ing about in the form of man, but with the animal still within'.

We have constantly to remember that it was the dynamic urge of

the spirit within that took us through all the past stages of evolu-

tion and brought us up to the present level of man. Our privilege

is to continue that march, to intensify the pace of that evolutionary

struggle guided by far-sight and foresight, and avoid, through alert-

ness and will, all chances of getting stranded. Intense dissatisfac-

tion with the present and keen desire to scale further heights are

the true marks of moral and spiritual greatness. Wherever they

are found, there the true Vedāntic spirit and temper are present.

Our limited vision sees but the finite aspect of things; but

the fullness of Being is an ever-present fact. It is only when we

shed this limited vision, when we see with our inner eyes open,

with adhyātma-dṛṣṭi, as Vedanta puts it, that we see this ever-pre-

74

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

sent Fullness. We then realize it as our true nature. We now

consider ourselves as little specks of dust, creatures of circum-

stances, little beggars ever craving for a little pleasure, a little hap-

piness from outside. Man, born heir to the Infinite, the Immortal,

and the Full, behaves like a beggar picking up bits of pleasure and

happiness from the debris of experience. That is the tragedy of

man revealed by the evolutionary vision of Vedānta; a prince who

has forgotten his princely heritage and goes begging in the streets.

This is human nature as we find it in each one of us; and this has

to be transformed. Man must be educated in the knowledge of his

own divine nature. This is ātmajñāna, Self-knowledge, the knowl-

edge not of our own separate ego-natures, but of the one Self

which is the Self of all; 'in Him we live and move and have our

being'. This is the knowledge that will restore to us the freedom

which is our birthright. We do not get this freedom as a gift from

nature; we do not get it as a gift from anyone. We simply realize

it as having been ours all the time, but withheld from us through

our organic deficiencies. Vedānta explains evolution as the grad-

ual removal of these organic deficiencies making for the progres-

sive manifestation of the spirit's inherent purity and perfection.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

But how to realize it? We have forgotten our true nature.

We have lost our way in the tangle of the world. Who will show

us the way? We ourselves. The purer the mind the more easily

it is controlled and disciplined; and a pure and disciplined mind

finds its way to God. Says Sri Ramakrishna: A rat enters the

trap of death lured by pleasing food, but finds itself caught and

struggles to get away. The way is open for it to get away, but

it does not realize it. Similarly, the way out to freedom is avail-

able for bound man; but few see it. They need guidance from

outside at the initial stages. It is such guidance that the Upani-

ṣads provide. This saving knowledge of the Self dawned in the

pure and disciplined hearts of the sages of ancient India. They,

out of love and compassion for man, left it as a continuing legacy for

posterity, as a tradition of hope and strength, as a perennial sacred

Gaṅgā of wisdom.

This is the secret of the perennial inspiration of the Upaniṣads

to humanity; they communicate to man the profound truths of

his inner being which he is ever in search of. That is what makes

it the sanātana dharma, the eternal philosophy, or, in the language

of Aldous Huxley, 'the perennial philosophy'. And here, in the

beautiful 'Peace Invocation' of the Īśā Upaniṣad, we have the as-

surance that man's seeking is not in vain, that what the sages realiz-

ed by purified vision, we, too, shall realize when our vision becomes

pure.

The Bhagavad-Gītā also refers to this state of the fullness of

being; it compares it to the ocean, brimful and majestic; mighty

rivers flow into it without disturbing its stability and majesty. The

man who realizes the Self, says the Gītā (II. 70), becomes just like

that ocean; he remains full and steady, in spite of his own or other

people's desires entering into him. But the un-Self-realized man,

being a small receptacle, becomes easily shaken by every passing

wind of desire.

The attainment of this fullness marks the summit of spiritual

life and the discarding of the spiritual crutches of rituals, ceremo-

nies, and forms. Sri Ramakrishna emphasizes this feature of

man's spiritual evolution. One of the songs which he loved to

sing reads:

'Why should one want to go on pilgrimage to Gayā, Gaṅgā,

Prabhāsa, Kāśī, or Kāñcī if all the time the heart repeats the

Divine Mother's name?

Thus we find that the whole process of spiritual and ethical

discipline leads to the awareness of the spiritual reality behind

man and nature. Through the senses we become aware of dif-

ferences, but through spiritual knowledge we become aware of the

unity behind these differences. Just as science discovers the laws

which link the different aspects of sense experience, philosophy

unravels the law of the perfect unity of being behind nature, with-

out and within. That unity is termed 'Brahman', which is defined

in the Upaniṣads thus (Taittirīya Upaniṣad, III. 1):

Yato vā imāni bhūtāni jāyante,

yena jātāni jīvanti,

Yat prayantyabhisamviśanti;

tat vijijñāsasva; tat brahmeti—

"That from which all these entities and beings are born,

That in which, being born, they live,

That unto which, in the end, they enter;

know That; That is Brahman."

It is obvious that this spiritual knowledge cannot come to us unless we seek it earnestly. In the New Testament (Matthew, vii. 7-8), Jesus expresses the same truth:

'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.'

The Upaniṣads, too, demand an inquiring, seeking mind. The seeker must have a questioning mind, the Upaniṣads say. Jijñāsā, inquiry, is the term used in the Upaniṣads for this frame of mind. The Upaniṣads will help all such inquiring minds in their pursuit of truth and excellence. What is needed is earnestness. We cannot saunter into truth-seeking; the leisurely attitude which flings questions about God and truth at random, not even waiting for the answer, will not do. Such an approach will not help to open up the profound meaning of the words of the Upaniṣads. In the words of one of the Upaniṣads, butter is present in milk, but it needs churning to bring it out; so is the truth hidden in experience; it has to be churned out by inquiry and deep meditation. This is why, in the beginning, the Upaniṣads were described as rahasya, secret. It was thought that only a select few could study the Upaniṣads; the sannyāsins but not the householders. But in the eighth century A.D. the great philosopher Śaṅkarācārya came, and he was the first person to open the doorway of this knowledge to householders, to the general public. He wrote his famous commentaries, which helped to bring before humanity the profundity and depth of the Brahmasvidyā and the Ātmajñāna of the Upaniṣads. But, even in spite of Śaṅkarācārya, the tradition of secrecy continued strong, keeping the Upaniṣads as sealed literature for millions of people. In fact, so strong has been this tradition of secrecy that, even about thirty years ago, I saw in the Mysore Sanskrit College that, when the Upaniṣads were being taught, the students, during the hour of study, put the ends of their robes over their heads, simulating the way of the sannyāsins.

It was Swami Vivekananda whe came at the end of the last century, who succeeded in throwing open the study of the Upaniṣads to all people, not only of this country but of all countries. Swami Vivekananda said that anyone, who wanted rationally to understand life and build the structure of a broad and deep character on enduring spiritual foundations, could study the Upaniṣads and derive immense benefit out of them. The greatest work that

Swami Vivekananda did was to expound the teachings of the Upaniṣads in the simplest language possible, broadcast them to people in East and West, show their practical bearing in every department of life, and demonstrate their capacity to solve the problems of modern man in East and West.

Nevertheless, there is some meaning in describing the Upaniṣads as rahasya, mystery. The Upaniṣads are profound, and only the seeker who is prepared to study them very seriously and intently can derive benefit from them. They are rahasya in this sense. Anybody and everybody cannot get the meaning out of them. The deep philosophy of the Upaniṣads is not revealed to the casual questioner; it is only revealed to the earnest inquirer who, with a ceaselessly questioning mind, is capable of penetrating the inmost depths of his being.

The Technique of Enjoyment

With our minds thus prepared, the Īśā Upaniṣad, in its first verse, takes us at once to these secret depths of Truth:

Īśāvāsyamidam் sarvaṁ yatkiñca jagatyām jagat;

Tena tyaktena bhuñjīthāḥ, mā grdhaḥ kasya svid dhanam—

'Whatever there is changeful in this ephemeral world, all that must be enveloped by the Lord. By this renunciation, support yourself. Do not covet the wealth of anyone.'

This is a very profound utterance, unequivocal, and yet extremely simple. The whole universe, it tells us, is filled with the spirit of God. And our experience of the manifold, of the sense world, must be seen in the light of this abiding truth. A bubble rises on a sheet of water, plays for an instant on the surface, and disappears. Whence did it come, what was it, and where did it go? From water it came; having come, it is water still; and unto water it returns at the end. The real nature of that momentary existence, the bubble, is water. Similarly, Brahman is the real nature of this world. Realize that; do not lose sight of that, caught up in the trivial waves of passing sense experience, says the verse. Change is here, death is here, in every phase of life; there is no steady base here on which we can safely erect the structure of our life; but look deeper, says the Upaniṣad, and you will see the deathless in the midst of death, the changeless in the midst of the changing, the one in the midst of the many. This is the one great message of the Upaniṣads, the message of the immortal and imperishable

Self behind the mortal and the perishable. Says the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (V. 13):

Nityo'nityānāṁ cetanaścetānānāṁ

eko bahūnāṁ yo vidadhāti kāmān;

Tamātmastḥaṁ ye'nupaśyanti dhīrāḥ

teṣāṁ śāntiḥ śāśvatī netareṣām—

'He is the eternal in the midst of the non-eternals, the principle of intelligence in all that are intelligent. He is One, yet fulfils the desires of the many. Those wise men who perceive Him as existing within their own self, to them belongs eternal peace, and to none else.'

If, then, we can see 'the eternal in the midst of the non-eternals', if we can envelop everything with the Lord, we shall understand the real nature of the universe. After that, the next step is, as this first verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad tells us, renunciation of whatever is not real. In the language of Vedānta, there must be both a negation and an affirmation, if we are to enjoy this world. Tena tyaktena bhujīthāḥ, by this renunciation, support yourself', says this verse. What supports us is not what we renounce, but what we possess and enjoy; and this verse tells us to enjoy the world through possessing God. This world is worth enjoying, and we should enjoy it with zest. Zest in life is expounded throughout the Bhagavad-Gītā and the Upaniṣads. The great teachers who discovered these truths were not kill-joys; they were sweet and lovable men. Sri Ramakrishna was full of joy and Srī Kṛṣṇa was full of joy. Jesus, too, was really a man of joy, although later dogma made him a man of sorrows.

Before we can enjoy this world, however, we have to learn the technique of enjoyment. This technique is described in detail in the Bhagavad-Gītā, but here, in this first verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad, the technique is summed up in that one word 'renunciation'. When Swami Vivekananda was in America, he met Professor Ingersoll, a man who was the terror of the theologians of the time; he was an agnostic and a great scholar and orator. In his 'Inspired Talks', Swami Vivekananda describes a conversation he had with Ingersoll (Complete Works, Vol. VII, Fifth Edition, p. 77):

'Ingersoll once said to me: "I believe in making the most out of this world, in squeezing the orange dry, because this world is all we are sure of." I replied: "I know a better way to squeeze the orange of this world than you do, and I get more out of it. I know I cannot die, so I am not in a hurry; I know there is no

fear, so I enjoy the squeezing. I have no duty, no bondage of

wife and children and property. I can love all men and women.

Everyone is God to me. Think of the joy of loving man as God!

Squeeze your orange this way and get ten thousandfold more out

of it. Get every single drop.'

This, then, is the technique of enjoying life which this Upaniṣad

proposed, leaving it to the Bhagavad-Gītā to develop all its practical

implications. Says the Bhagavad-Gītā (II. 49):

Dūreṇa hyavaramm karma buddhiyogāddhānañjaya;

Buddhau śaraṇam anviccha kṛpaṇāḥ phalahetavaḥ—

'Work (done with selfish desire) is far inferior, O Arjuna, to

that done with a detached reason. Take refuge in this detached

reason. Small-minded are they who are motivated by selfish results.'

Renunciation is an eternal maxim in ethics as well as in spirit-

uality. There is no true enjoyment except what is purified by re-

nunciation. In our daily lives, in inter-personal relationships, we

observe that we achieve the greatest joy not when we affirm our-

selves, but when we deny ourselves. And in this teaching of the

Upaniṣads, we have the explanation of this great truth. Through

renunciation and detachment, we become identified with the im-

mortal and divine Brahman which is the Self of all. We see, with

our eyes and mind purified, this universe as that Brahman and re-

nounce what our small separatist ego had conjured up. Thus, this

renunciation is not a mere negation; it is a negation leading to a

larger affirmation. The dialectics of the higher life, like the dia-

lectics of evolution itself, proceeds through a series of negations

and affirmations. It is the affirmative elements in this dialectic

movement that constitute the positive content of joy in ethical and

spiritual life.

Finally, this first verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad says: mā grdhaḥ

kasya svid dhanam—'Do not covet the wealth of another.' That

is a very plain statement, but it involves a number of ethical and

spiritual values. Whatever you have gained by your honest labour,

say all moral and spiritual teachers, that alone belongs to you;

enjoy life with that, and do not covet what belongs to others. Śaṅ-

karācārya, in one of his beautiful hymns, addressing man, says:

Mūḍha jahīhi dhanāgama trṣṇām

kuru sadbuddhiṁ manasi vitṛṣṇām;

Yallabhase nijakarmopāttam

vittam tena vinodaya cittam—

'O fool, give up this excessive desire for wealth; yoke your mind to the good and the true, and cultivate detachment. Whatever wealth you obtain by your own honest labour, with that learn to delight your mind and heart.'

Our hearts will ask: Is wealth evil? Are we to become mendicants? No, replies Śaṅkarācārya, and adds: But yoke your mind to righteousness and cultivate dispassion. Take the mind away from what does not belong to you, what you have not earned yourself. Enjoy life with zest, with the fruits of your own honest labour; avoid covetousness, for it will lead to exploitation, which will destroy the moral life of both the exploiter and the exploited. Exploitation in any and every form must be avoided if you want to develop your spiritual nature, your ethical nature, which is the true aim of life. Remembering that it is by the dialectics of negation and affirmation that true joy in life is achieved, we approach wealth in a spirit of dedication, by negating the ego and its evaluations and affirming the universal value of Brahman. It is only when we become free from all spirit of selfish exploitation that we can truly enjoy life. The world is nothing but the blissful Brahman; and we are here to enjoy it. It is only when our eyes are purified by renunciation that the world will appear to us in its true form, as consisting of waves and waves of the bliss of Brahman. This is the true joy of life; it is growth, it is development, it is realization for man. It is fulfilment, pūrṇatā, the goal of evolution itself.

THREE

ĪSĀ UPANIṢAD–2

The first verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad, as we have seen, gives us the fruit of the greatest and loftiest vision of the sages of the Upaniṣads—the presence of the divine in man and nature, the truth of the spiritual character of the universe. The second verse, which we are to study now, provides the corollary of that vision. For if this vision be true, if the universe be spiritual through and through, the question arises, how shall I live my life here in this world? This is answered by the second verse which reads thus:

Kurvanneveha karmāṇi jijīviṣet śatam samāḥ;

Evaṁ tvayi nānyatheto'sti na karma lipyate nare—

'In this world, one should desire tc live a hundred years, but only by performing actions. Thus, and in no other way, can man be free from the taint of actions.'

In these words, the Īśā Upaniṣad gives us immediately the assurance that this life on earth has meaning and significance. We need not despair of this life, nor seek to cut it short, nor weep and wail our lives out. Having understood the meaning and significance of life, we must try to live our lives to the full span, and the full span of human life, according to the Vedas, is one hundred years: Satāyur vai puruṣaḥ. Says Śaṅkarācārya in his commentary: tāvad hi puruṣasya paramāyuḥ nirūpitam—'That long, verily, has been determined to be the length of human life.' This determination was the product of a close study of human life. The sages came to the conclusion that if an individual lived a healthy life, physically and mentally, he would live a hundred years; they also saw that if an individual lived an unhealthy life, if his diet was poor, sanitation unsatisfactory, and his way of life faulty, his span of life would be reduced to lower and lower levels. India's average life expectancy was reduced to as low as twenty-nine in the beginning of this century; but now, as a result of the vigorous implementation of sanitary and health measures, it is rising and is somewhere in the region of fifty. If we can raise it to seventy-five or eighty, as in other advanced countries, it will come close to the ancient Vedic standard; India will then understand the Vedic ideal of the worth of human life and learn to invest it with joy and zest.

M·U–6

This idea of a hundred years' life span is the accepted tradition in India. In the brahmacarya ceremony, for instance, at the time of the investiture with the holy thread, the boy is blessed with the words: 'May you live a hundred years!' After the marriage ceremony, the husband and wife pray together: 'May we live a hundred autumns!' But it must not be supposed that this tradition implies merely length of life. India discovered very early in her history that a long life, in itself, had no meaning. That was merely quantity; but quality emerges as the more dominant factor in the higher levels of human life.

So life must be not only long in years, but also rich in quality, in knowledge and joy: this is the product of disciplined life and action. And this is the significance of this second verse. The Upaniṣads tell us that we must try to live a hundred years, the full span, but that it must be lived with joy and zest. Imparting of this quality to life is possible only through self-knowledge, through an increasing awareness, in the midst of life and action, of our inherent divine nature. Unless we can do this we shall be 'enjoying' only darkness all the time; and the longer our lives the denser will be that darkness, the feeling of loneliness and frustration which, in the industrial civilization in which we now live, is one of the most predominant characteristics of advancing age.

So the Iśā Upaniṣad gives us at once two basic ideas which together constitute the totality of the Vedāntic outlook, the outlook which developed later as a comprehensive spirituality in the Bhagavad-Gītā, and which, in our own time, found still further and fuller expression in the message of Swami Vivekananda. These two basic ideas ask us to live the full span of life, to work with zest and joy and with a deep interest in life and its affairs, but to do all this with a new outlook, an outlook based on true understanding of the real nature of man and the universe, seeing all as 'enveloped by the Lord'. Overcoming laziness and indifference, we must work, we must fill our long lives with good, useful actions, but all that work must be done in the light of the divine, and man the mortal must become man the immortal in this very life.

The heart of the seeker asks: If God is true, if He is the Self of all, how shall I conduct this little life of mine? Put God in and through God; for He is the truth of all and everything. Life

and its achievements become trivial when this truth of God does not shine through them. The trivialities of life are only trivial when taken by themselves. Renounce this faulty method, says this Upaniṣad, and affirm the truth of God and watch how even the most trivial aspects of life become aglow with purpose and significance. In the beautiful words of Sri Ramakrishna, the zero by itself has no value; we may add zero to zero and make a whole string of zeros, but yet they will have no value. But if we put the digit one before it, the zero immediately becomes significant; and every addition of a fresh zero makes the figure progressively significant. That one is God, according to Vedānta, the Self of all, in whom we live and move and have our being. Sings the English poet Shelley ('Adonais', LII):

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly. //

Nevertheless, in order to understand this truth, which alone can make possible a life full of zest and joy, a spirit of inquiry is required. The greatest truths do not lie on the surface of life, but in its depths. The shells float on the surface of the ocean, but the pearls lie in its depths, says Sri Ramakrishna. Investigation is, therefore, necessary to understand this fundamental truth of the divinity of life. The surface aspects of life, taken by themselves, do not disclose this truth. But there have been people who had the courage and capacity to dive to life's depths and bring to the surface gaze the precious pearls of the truth of God, of the spiritual life. The Upaniṣads are a storehouse of these pearls. Enlightened by this knowledge of God, the sages of the Upaniṣads tell us that life, including life at the surface, is an inherent good, that we should live with joy and zest, and that we should, in the process, also seek to find the true source of this zest and joy. When so planned, life becomes unified and meaningful. And length of life becomes length of time and opportunity to dive to the depths and get at the pearls that are there.

This is the positive outlook we find in Vedānta, in the philosophy of the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā. There is no weeping and wailing in this philosophy. The conception of life as a vale of tears came to India a little later, and we hugged it to our bosom more and more as the nation began increasingly to lose its vigour. Summoning India to this Vedāntic heritage, Swami Vivekananda

said (Lecture on 'Vedānta and Its Application to Indian Life', Complete Works, Vol. III, p. 238):

'And the more I read the Upaniṣads, my friends, my countrymen, the more I weep for you, for therein is the great practical application. Strength, strength for us. What we need is strength, who will give us strength? There are thousands to weaken us, and of stories we have had enough. Every one of our Purāṇas if you press it, gives out stories enough to fill three-fourths of the libraries of the world. Everything that can weaken us as a race we have had for the last thousand years....Therefore, my friends, as one of your blood, as one that lives and dies with you, let me tell you that we want strength, strength, and every time strength. And the Upaniṣads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong, energized through them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds, and all sects, to stand on their feet and be free; freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom, are the watchwords of the Upaniṣads.'

True religion suffers when it falls into the hands of weak people. Śaṅkarācārya refers to this in his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gītā. In the Gītā, Krṣṇa says that, this yoga, which was honoured and practised by a succession of great people in the past, from Vivasvat to Manu and from Manu to Ikṣvāku, in the course of centuries, became diluted and was lost (IV.1-2). Commenting on this brief statement of Krṣṇa, Śaṅkarācārya adds that this great science and art of spiritual life became diluted and lost by falling into the hands of people with mind and body weak and sense organs undisciplined. Similarly, Swami Vivekananda attributed the prevalence of easy-going forms of religion, bereft of the heroic elements, to the general weakness of the Indian people. So he taught the people once again the Vedāntic message of strength and fearlessness and exhorted them to develop strength of will and character through the service of man, before trying to understand and scale the spiritual heights revealed in the Upaniṣads. How often did he call upon our people to be strong (ibid., p. 242):

'Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gītā. These arè bold words, but I have to say them, for I love you....You will understand the Gītā better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krṣṇa better with a little of strong blood in you. You will understand the Upaniṣads better and the glory of the Ātman, when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel yourselves as men.'

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD–2

Zest in Life

These words of Swami Vivekananda bring to us the atmosphere of the Upaniṣads, an atmosphere of positive thinking, of freshness, of vigour, of zest. There are any number of passages in the Upaniṣads wi ere you will find this atmosphere of zest and joy and vigour. The outlook of the Upaniṣads is characterized by joy and cheer, by what William James called 'healthy-mindedness'. God's name itself is joy, in the Upaniṣads. What a beautiful exposition of divine nature is found in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (II.7):

Raso vai saḥ;

rasam் hyevāyam labdhvānandī bhavati;

Ko hyevānyāt kaḥ prānyāt,

yadeṣa ākāśa ānando na syāt—

'He is, verily, bliss; man, verily, is blissful by getting this bliss. Who would have lived, who would have breathed, if this infinite expanse of bliss were not there?'

This Upaniṣad says that the nature of God is bliss itself, and the little joys that we experience in life, even in the sense life, are but particles of that infinite bliss of God.

The Taittirīya Upaniṣad further discusses the nature of human joy. After a majestic preparatory utterance: Saiṣānandāsya mīmāṁsā bhavati—'Now begins an investigation into the nature of ānanda, joy, bliss, or happiness', it begins to give what may be termed a calculus of happiness. It is instructive to note that, unlike the usual run of theologies, the Upaniṣad does not begin its calculus with the bliss of heaven as its unit; on the contrary, it finds its unit in what seems to be, theologically speaking, the most unlikely place —a young man! And it reveals thereby its refreshing positive outlook. Says the Upaniṣad (II. 8):

Yuvā syāt sādhuyuvā adhyāyakaḥ;

āśiṣṭho draṣṭho baliṣṭhaḥ;

Tasyeyam prthivī sarvā vittasya pūrṇā syāt;

sa eko mānusa ānandaḥ—

'Let us take a youth, a good-mannered youth, well-educated; full of hope, firm in mind, and strong in body; let him have dominion over the full wealth of this earth; that is the unit of human bliss.'

Having fixed the unit, the Upaniṣad proceeds to measure and fix every other form of happiness, human and divine, in terms of this

unit, as multiples of the happiness of a youth. But we find that, in commencing with a youth as the unit of human happiness, the Upaniṣad will not accept any and every youth. Any youth, simply because he or she is young, cannot serve as the unit. Looking about us today we see plenty of young people who cannot certainly be taken as units of human happiness; many of them are jaded and haggard, even though they are young in body; they are old even before they have started being young! So they cannot serve as units of human happiness. Besides youth, the Upaniṣad enumerates six other constituents. Goodness comes second, a good disposition; the third is education, the stimulation and expansion of creative intelligence; the fourth is hope and aspiration, the joyous beckoning of the future; the fifth is firmness of mind and purpose, a disciplined will; and the sixth is strength of body, general physical health and well-being. The Upaniṣad is not satisfied with these six, and adds a seventh—wealth; youth, goodness, education, hope, and strength of mind and body will ever remain a fraction, thinks the Upaniṣad, without the addition of wealth; to complete his happiness, the young man must have command over wealth to make his way in the world.

Now, then, having at last defined its unit of human happiness, the Upaniṣad proceeds to estimate all other forms of happiness in terms of multiples of a hundred of this one; in this ascending series comes the happiness of angels and gods and all orders of higher beings, reaching up to Prajāpati, the Cosmic Person. But equal to the happiness of each one of these, from the youth up to Prajāpati, says the Upaniṣad, is the happiness of a man who has realized Brahman, God, the Self of all, and has ceased to be a slave of his senses and his sense-bound mind. Spiritual realization confers immeasurable happiness, as it connects one with Brahman, God, which is the ocean of all bliss, of which all others are but particles. And every youth is heir to this attainment, in virtue of which he ranks higher than even the angels or gods. This is the highest excellence of man, say the Upaniṣads.

Think for a moment of the happiness experienced by Sri Rama-krishna, or Jesus, or Buddha. What in the world can compare with their happiness? They are as happy as the angels and gods in heaven, and they are equally as happy as a youth on earth. A youth would feel humble before such a man; he, having realized

the Self in all, is the equal of all, but none of his equal. This is

how Sankarācārya expresses it (Vivekacūdāmani: verse 543):

Nirdhano'pi sadā tuṣṭopyasahāyo mahābalah;

Nityatrptopyabhuñjānopyasamah samadarśanah—

'Ever-satisfied, though without riches; infinitely strong, though without help or support; ever-content, though not enjoying sense pleasures; and without an equal, though looking on all as his equal—(such is a man of Self-realization) '

None is superior, none is inferior, for the same Ātman is in all, and he has realized this truth. But we look upon him as a spiritual giant among men, so tall, so great is he. Sri Ramakrishna behaved with each one just like a friend and equal, but everyone realized how far above them all he was. This is the eternal glory of a knower of Brahman, say the Upaniṣads. It is the acme of happiness and blessedness for man.

Man in the Indian context is yet far far away from that elementary unit of human happiness delineated in the Upaniṣads; he has yet to achieve the virtues and graces, joys and delights, of social existence through economic and social amelioration measures, and an efficient system of education designed, in the words of Vivekananda, to bring out the perfection already within man. This, according to him, is the early phase of the spiritual training of man, man-making, as he termed it. Religion, the realization of the Ātman within, achievement of the bliss of God, comes only after this. Godliness is the fulfilment of manliness and not its negation. Man must first achieve human happiness before running after divine happiness; otherwise, religion will be cheap, and the happiness achieved through it will be a sham. Hence, Vivekananda exhorted his countrymen (Complete Works, Vol. V, Seventh Edition, pp. 10-11):

'Come, be men! Come out of your narrow holes and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march! Do you love man? Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things;...Sympathy for the poor—and bread to their hungry mouths—enlightenment to the people at large—and struggle unto death to make men of them who have been brought to the level of beasts by the tyranny of your forefathers.'

This positive, cheerful, sunny attitude to life and religion is what modern man will learn from the Upaniṣads. Religion is associated by the spiritually blind, be they scholars or ordinary

people, with all sorts of abnormalities; they experience or come across a pathological condition and christen it religion. But the Upaniṣads, as we have seen, treat spiritual bliss as the fulfilment and completion of the joys of a perfect youth.

Youth has zest in life; much of religion as taught in society is designed to take away that zest without putting in any new focus of zest. Religion so understood has the effect of contracting a man's personality, narrowing his interests, and making him self-centred. True religion does not destroy zest, but purifies, expands, and heightens it. The earlier zest was based on self-interest, and derived its force from physical vitality and mental ambition. This is purified and transformed by the new vision of life brought by religion with its intimations of the immortal and the divine within, and its sense of oneness with all outside. The moment I realize myself as one with all, a new zest comes to me, more intense, more pervasive, and more pure. To make others happy is my happiness, to serve others and help them to achieve their life's fulfilment is my fulfilment. This is the essential teaching of the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā; this is the basis, the metaphysical foundation, of all ethics and religion.

Joyful Old Age

In the light of the above, we get a clearer perception of the significance of the second verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad: 'In this world one should desire to live a hundred years, but only by performing actions.' Man must use his body, as an instrument, to work and, through work, to create beauty, wealth, and welfare outside, and moral and spiritual development within. It can help us to attain the highest spiritual experience. In the Upaniṣads we find the human body described as the most valuable instrument that man can have. The best of music can be produced from this instrument, provided it is tuned correctly, disciplined and trained properly. There is a verse in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (XI. xxix. 22) in which God speaks to man thus:

Eṣā buddhimatāṁ buddhih manīṣā ca manīṣinām; Yat satyam anṛtena martyenāpnoti mā amṛtam—

This is the technique of religion; hence its insistence on the

proper care of the body and of the mental functions that derive

from it. The health of the psycho-physical organism is necessary

for all achievement, worldly or religious. Properly trained and

disciplined, this organism will eventually land us on the other shore

of life—on the shore of illumination and immortality.

This was the positive, refreshing outlook imparted by the Upa-

niṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā. But after long centuries, it gave

place to weakening and negative attitudes, first in religion, and,

later, in all aspects of our national life. The spirit of effort and

struggle gave way to ease and complaisance. Unwilling and unable

to pay the price, the nation sought for cheap, easy, and quick

successes, in religion as much as in worldly life. The search for the

highest and best, which makes for character in any field of en-

deavour, became weaker and feebler. The joy that characterizes

all healthy search after higher values, like the joy of mountain-

climbing felt by a healthy youth, gradually vanished from life, and

sadness invaded its sacred precincts; happiness began to be sought

not in action but in inaction; instead of the Upaniṣadic ideal of life

in death, it became death in life. The following lines of a modern

poet appear to be an exact description of this weakened Indian

outlook:

Sweet is sleep, death is better;

But it is best never to have been born.

It is amazing to reflect that this weak, defeatist attitude could

pervade the Indian atmosphere for centuries, entertained not only

by the ignorant but even by the learned; and that, too, in spite of

the fearless, sunny, outlook of the Upaniṣads. But now, listening

once again to the stirring words of the Upaniṣads, India is gradual-

ly overcoming this attitude and waking to the world of life and

light. This is the great contribution of Swami Vivekananda to

India and to the world; he was an awakener of souls. He preach-

ed in East and West the Vedāntic message of strength and fearless-

ness, love and service. With the strength that comes from the

knowledge of our inherent divine nature, our youths will recapture

the spirit of youthfulness, and our aged will continue to be cheerful.

What a great contribution these spiritual ideas can make to

enrich human life not only in India, but everywhere today! In

spite of its glitter, in spite of its mirth and laughter, modern in-

dustrial civilization hides beneath its polished face much sad sor-

rowing.

There is a tremendous moan beneath that civilization. Its fierce competitive milieu has no place for the thousands who fail in life; neither has it any honoured place for the old and the infirm who have ceased to be productive individuals. The aged man, on his part, also loses faith in himself even before others lose faith in him. The atmosphere around him whispers to him: You are unwanted. The current of youthful life flows by him, but he is left stranded on the sands. He feels squeezed out and thrown onto the scrap heap, as it were; and sadness, dejection, and utter loneliness descend upon him.

This the Upaniṣads will not allow. Old age is not a thing to be looked down upon; it has its own graces. The young and the old both have the divine within; and that alone can be the locus of true value for man; for it is indestructible and inalienable; physical capacities for work and pleasure cannot be the true criterion of human value. These pass, but the Ātman, the Self of man, remains unaffected by the changes and chances of the body. The Upaniṣads view the young and the old in this light (Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, IV.3):

Tvam் strī tvam் pumānasi tvam் kumāra uta vā kumārī; Tvam் jīrṇo dandena vañcasi tvam jāto bhavasi viśvatomukhah—

A healthy society is one that brings the awareness of this divine nature to more and more of its young and old. There are two major problems plaguing modern civilization. One is the problem of old age, the other is the problem of leisure. Vedānta, with its message of the divine in the heart of man, and its further message that the object of life is to realize this divine, contains a gospel of hope for modern man. Vedānta would not have asked man to desire to live the full span of a hundred years if such life were to be lived by him in ennui and frustration. Nothing else can be expected of a philosophy in which life and leisure mean only a round of three 'e's, namely, entertainment, excitement, and exhaustion! Vedānta holds before man another ideal: growth, development, and realization, in the light of which both labour and leisure become creative and educative. 'Enjoy through renunciation', says this Īśa Upaniṣad; and adds, 'that is the only way by which our actions

may not pile more bonds on us, by which we become truly free.' Given this spiritual purpose and direction, life gains in richness with every passing year. And leisure becomes the means of deepening life and giving it purer joys and delights. Thus, getting the utmost out of life is a policy common to materialism and Vedānta. But in what is so gained, there is the utmost divergence between the two.

Coming to Grips with Life

There is another point to notice while considering the second verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad, another reason why we should direct our energies to get the utmost out of life. This is that the Upaniṣads say that truth can be realized only in and through the human body. We may go to heaven and enjoy the pleasures there as one of the gods, but shall never be able to realize Truth there. The merit that took us there, in the language of economics, becomes a vanishing quantity, like an unearned increment; and it does not last. Sooner or later it will be exhausted; we do not produce new merit there; and we shall, in due course, have to come back to the human world and start once again on our journey towards Truth and perfection. So, say the Upaniṣads, why not strive to realize Truth here and now? Life is static if it means only a round of pleasures in the world or in a heaven. It becomes creative only if it moves towards Truth, towards perfection. After a long travail has nature evolved the human body, says modern biology. Paying a heavy price of merit has man purchased his psycho-physical equipment, say the Hindu scriptures. The body is an instrument to achieve two things: the delights of social existence—abhyudaya, and spiritual emancipation—niḥśreyasa. So the Upaniṣad tells us that a long life of a hundred years gives one ample opportunity to see life steadily and see it through, to achieve fulfilment through the realization of the Self.

This, of course, is no easy task; it does not come about without yoking intelligence and will to this high purpose. Śaṅkarācārya, in one of his memorable verses (Carpaṭapañjarikā Stotra, 7), says:

Bālastāvat kriḍāsaktah taruṇastāvat taruṇī saktah; Vṛddhastāvat cintāmagnaḥ pare brahmaṇi ko'pi na raktah—

aged, getting immersed in various anxieties; there is none, alas, who

is attracted to the Supreme Brahman!

This is life's great tragedy. Time slips away while we give

the body and mind up to life's secondary purposes, forgetting and

ignoring its primary purpose. The Upaniṣads tell us that there is

another way of going through life, a way that will enable us to

maintain our youthful zest right through to the end, and, by asking

questions, by striving, to come to grips with life, and place our-

selves in touch with the abiding reality behind all passing things.

This is the great challenge of life to human intelligence. And

human intelligence as expressed in the Upaniṣads accepted this

challenge and gave to humanity the vision of its highest excellence.

Vedānta embodies both this challenge and this vision. Because it

is such a significant challenge, ever pleasing to the heart of man,

Vedānta stands as a perpetual message, as fresh in this twentieth

century as it was when it was first delivered in those far off ages.

Verse after verse in this literature brings before us the great joy

of living, showing us how to deepen our perceptions so that, each

day, we get newer and newer vistas of life's beauty as we grow

in years and maturity. In his 'Lines above Tintern Abbey', Words-

worth records a similar thought:

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.

This maturity will come to us, bringing with it a sense of com-

passion, an out-growing from the chrysalis of our little egos, a sense

of identity with the joys and sorrows of others. This is what is

called growing spiritually. This is growing old gracefully, vigour

and vitality finding expression in the inner man, while the outer

man is gradually withering away. Sri Ramakrishna used to com-

pare this with the technique of statue-making. First, the

mould is carefully prepared; then molten metal is poured into it;

cooling, it sets. When the image is formed inside, the outer mould,

having done its work, is cast away without evoking any regret or

sadness.

What, then, is the secret of coming to grips with life? The

answer this Upaniṣad gives to this question is: Work, but in a

spirit of detachment. This cryptic, aphoristic statement is typical

of Upaniṣadic teaching. The Upaniṣads had no time to bring out

all the implications of their great message; the hearts of the sages

were full, for they had seen visions profound and tremendous, and

they wanted to communicate them to man in concise, simple, un-

equivocal language. Detailed development of their ideas they left

to later thinkers. Fundamental to our spiritual progress, says this

Upaniṣad, is what we do and how we do it. All our life we are

engaged in so many activities; from infancy till death we are con-

stantly engaged in some action or other, and if, at the end of our

lives, we take account of these actions, we find that, instead of re-

leasing us from bondage, they have merely helped to increase our

bondage. The way to come to grips with life, therefore, is to use

every action, every opportunity, as a means of freeing ourselves

from that bondage. If we make our actions and our life the venue

of an abiding quest for the deep meaning and significance that is

hidden in life, then every action will help to destroy that bondage

a little and give man a taste of true freedom. This is the impact

of philosophic knowledge or wisdom on life. Says the Bhagavad-

Gītā (IV. 37):

Yathaidhāṁsi samiddhogniḥ bhasmasāt kurute'rjuna;

Jñānāgniḥ sarvakarmāṇi bhasmasāt kurute tathā—

'As blazing fire reduces to ashes a pile of wood, so, O Arjuna, does

the fire of jñāna (wisdom) reduce to ashes all actions.'

Philosophy or wisdom does not destroy actions, but only their

binding power. Wisdom purifies life and action, says the next verse

of the Bhagavad-Gītā:

Na hi jñānena sadṛśaṁ pavitraṁ iha vidyate—

'There is nothing so purifying as wisdom in this world.'

A rope can bind no more after it is burnt, says Sri Ramakrishna,

though it may still retain the appearance of a rope. Similarly,

actions bind man; but burn them in the fire of wisdom; then they

may retain the appearance of action but will no longer have the

power to bind. The energy that found expression as action will

be assimilated to knowledge and wisdom, says the Bhagavad-Gītā

(IV. 33):

Sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ pārtha jñāne parisamāpyate—

'All action in its entirety, O Pārtha, attains its consummation in

knowledge (wisdom).'

How, then, are we to create in us that burning fire of knowledge or wisdom in which to burn our actions? The answer lies in the message of Vedānta, in the teachings of the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-Gītā. If we want the answer, we must face up to the problem. We cannot escape action by running away from action. 'Face the brute', as Swami Vivekananda expressed it in a lecture on Vedānta in London, recalling his experience, during his monastic wanderings in India, of an encounter with a group of monkeys. He first tried to run, but they chased him; just then a passer-by shouted to him not to run away but to face the brutes; he did accordingly. And as soon as he turned and faced them, they fell back. By shutting the eyes or by running, the brute does not vanish; it will stare us in the face when we open our eyes again. Life's problems are not to be avoided; they have to be faced. It is not escapism, therefore, that is taught in the Upaniṣads, but acceptance, the coming to grips with life, meeting the challenge of life with the challenge of philosophy, with the strength of spirituality. Therein lies its intense practical reference. Vedānta is not only a profound metaphysics, but also an intensely practical science and art of life—Brahmavidyā and Yoga-śāstra. If we live even a fraction of its message, we shall achieve much fearlessness, says the Bhagavad-Gītā (II. 40):

Svalpamapyasyā dharmasyā trāyate mahato bhayāt—

Very often we hear people say, 'I do not believe in all this metaphysics and religion. I believe in doing good. That is my philosophy of life.' This is good as far as it goes; but it does not go very far. Doing good often becomes the outward expression of either the fatness of the ego or the emptiness of the heart. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan referring to this school of thought, says in one of his lectures: the modern man and the modern woman do not believe in religion or in God. They believe only in what they call 'going about doing good'. But it is 'more going about than doing good'. The philosophy of 'doing good' is a cheap philosophy. Those who try to base their lives on it will soon find its inadequacy when confronted by the knocks and trials of life. On such occasions the mind often beats a retreat from its 'doing good to the world' position. Such an attitude does not give one that spiritual strength which alone can keep the mind steady in all situations of success or failure, joy or sorrow. The greatest strength comes from the

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD-2

95

knowledge of the Ātman, our divine nature; says the Kena Upaniṣad (II. 4):

ātmanā vindate vīryam—

'Strength comes from (the knowledge of) the Ātman.'

A Warning

The Īśā Upaniṣad next proceeds to describe, in five memorable verses, the nature of the Ātman and the fruits of its realization. But before doing so, it deems it necessary to utter a note of warning in its third verse, which reads:

Asuryā nāma te lokā andhena tamasāvṛtāḥ; Tāṁste pretyābhigacchanti ye ke cātmahano janāḥ—

'Into the worlds of the asuras, enveloped in blinding darkness, verily do they repair after death who are slayers of the Ātman.'

In this verse we are warned as to what happens to us if we forget and neglect the Ātman, if we ignore It, and live merely trivial lives. A deep philosophical truth is couched in mythical, symbolic language. Life lived without the consciousness of our divine nature is trivial; it is a life of darkness and sorrow. The word 'darkness' used in this verse is not physical darkness, but the darkness of ignorance; it is spiritual blindness. The verse compares this darkness to hell. In myths, hell is the abode of the asuras, the demons. An alternative reading is asūryā, literally 'without sunlight', absolute darkness. Imagine a cavern which has been dark from the beginning of time, a place where the rays of the sun have never penetrated. What would be the condition of a man if he had to spend his whole life in such a cavern? Such is the condition of one who passes through life without the least awareness of his divine nature. It is this awareness that evolves the moral man, the spiritual man, out of the given individual. To ignore this ever-present reality of the Self is to keep away from light and clutch at shadows.

The verse further tells us that those who prefer to live in such spiritual blindness are really killing themselves. Ātmahana means 'people who kill themselves'. In ordinary suicide we kill only the body, which is something external to us, but here we kill ourselves, our real Self. The death of the body is not so serious as the death of the soul. By neglecting our true nature, by ignoring

it, by clutching at the shadows of the non-Self all the time, we commit suicide of the most serious kind.

Śankarācārya, in his commentary on this verse, explains the nature of this extraordinary kind of suicide which the world practises on the widest scale. Says he:

Avidyādoṣena vidyamānaśya ātmanah tiraśkaranāt ātmahana ityucyate—

'Because a man neglects his ever-present Self through the evil of ignorance (spiritual blindness), he is called "one who commits suicide".'

Clutching at the shadows of sensate experience, taking them to be the whole of reality, man ignores the infinite, immortal dimension of his own personality. This is the meaning of saṁsāra, worldliness, where man gets submerged in the objects of his experience, and the subject, his real Self, is enveloped in the darkness of unawareness; this is spiritual suicide. As we have already seen, to live in the world is not the same thing as being 'worldly'. To live in saṁsāra is not the same thirg as being a saṁsārin. As Sri Ramakrishna so beautifully expresses it in his parable, we all live in saṁsāra, which means the world. The saint and the sinner, even an incarnation of God, lives in saṁsāra. There is no harm in that, assures Sri Ramakrishna, but, he adds, saṁsāra, the world, worldliness, should not live in us. A boat should be on water, but water should not be in the boat; for that is dangerous for the boat.

Worldliness is the negation of spiritual awareness. The animal bodies are meant for mere sense-experience; they have no experience of the subject. The world of objects comprises their sphere of awareness and of pleasure and pain. It is only in the human body that subjective awareness emerges, the awareness of self as different from the non-self. But in the early stages, this self is the little self, the ego which is mostly conditioned and constituted by the external world, the non-self. Man at this stage still functions at the animal level; he has, however, the requisite equipment and means to deepen his self-awareness and realize himself as the Ātman, the eternal, pure, luminous, ever-free Self, by controlling and disciplining his psycho-physical personality. But if, in spite of this capacity and opportunity, he fails to do so, and

is content to submerge himself in the world of objects and things,

he makes an utter fool of himself in spite of all his worldly suc-

cess. This is spiritual suicide. Over and over again, the Upani-

ṣads exhort man to turn his attention to the realization of his

true nature by properly using his nature-given equipment of body,

senses, and mind. They implore man not to convert his psycho-

physical organism into a tomb of his soul, but to move forward,

to evolve. This is the clear call of the Upaniṣads in one of their

most memorable verses (Katha Upaniṣad, III. 14), which Swami

Vivekananda proclaimed from the housetops in East and West so

forcefully in his oft-repeated clarion call: ‘Arise! Awake! And stop

not till the goal is reached.’

The fate of those who fail to heed this call is described in this

third verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad. Through spiritual blindness we

enter into such forms and ways of life where we cannot get even

the slightest inkling of this Ātman, our true Self. There may be

some people who do not mind being in darkness; but most people

prefer to be in the light. Among those who so prefer, there are

varying levels and stages of achievement. Utter worldliness is a

rare occurrence; most people do get, in the language of Words-

worth, ‘intimations of immortality’ at some time or other in their

lives.

The experience may last hardly for a second, like a raindrop

in a hot sandy waste. So does wisdom come and go; the clouds

open for a while, and the sun shines. But once more the clouds

close together again and the vision passes. So we go on from day

to day. But by utilizing all life's experiences, by spending a little

time each day in thinking, evaluating our actions, and giving mo-

mentum and direction to our lives, we shall be able to capture, for

ever-lengthening periods, that fleeting vision that we have experi-

enced; the ‘intimations of immortality’ become then a little more

constant and steady.

The secret of spiritual progress is therefore to cultivate aware-

ness of the Ātman, our divine nature; to cultivate this constantly

in and through all life's experiences. It is this awareness that

marks the difference between the worldly man and the spiritual

seeker. In The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna we find Sri Rama-

krishna recounting the characteristics of the true seeker, and those

of the worldly man. In a vivid word-picture, Sri Ramakrishna

describes the scene of the death of a worldly man. The old man

is to die in a few minutes. His children and relatives are gathered

around him, anxious and waiting. The old man looks around; he

finds a lamp in the corner of the room with two wicks burning

within it. Finding that more oil is being spent, he tells his son

in a feeble voice to put out one of the wicks and save unnecessary

expenditure of oil. Throughout his life he has been deeply attach-

ed to his wealth and never learned the art of spending it; never

liked to part with it. Now death knocks at his door; he has to

go, leaving all his wealth behind; but he does not realize it. His

worldly infatuation does not allow him to think of God or the

higher values of life even at that moment of crisis; he only thinks

of saving his hard-earned wealth; wisdom does not dawn on him

even as a fleeting experience. What can be more pitiable than this?

When we contemplate this scene our mind asks: Is this the picture

of human glory? Is this the limit which human intelligence and

capacity can reach? The heart sinks at the very idea. If this is

the highest that man can achieve, woe unto humanity. But our

hearts assure us that such is not the case, and that that life is a

failure in spite of its wealth and power. Such a man is a failure

because he has not discovered the art of living, has not experienced

the joy of living.

Pleasure comes from the contact of the senses with the sense

objects; but bliss proceeds from the inner depths of the Self. The

eternal spring of bliss lies within the heart of man; its realization

is life fulfilment, perfection, which is also wisdom, the fruition

of knowledge and experience. The art of living is, therefore, to

make this wisdom, and the peace and joy accompanying it, mani-

fest in our lives. Wisdom, like the kingdom of heaven in the par-

able of Jesus (Luke, xvii. 20-21), is to be found not in some place

remote from life, but within life itself:

'And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the

kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The

kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

'Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the

kingdom of God is within you.'

Sri Ramakrishna spoke of 'churning' wisdom out of life as butter

is churned out of milk. 'If you mix milk and water', he said,

'you can separate them again only after much effort. But if you

first convert the milk into butter, and keep the butter in water,

it will not mix.' This aptly describes the technique of living.

Wisdom must be 'churned' out of life, and, armed with that wisdom, we can mix with the world, engage in any activity, and live in any situation, without getting 'diluted' or lost. This is spiritual freedom, it is perfection. 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect', exhorts Jesus (Matthew, v. 48). This perfection is the birthright of every man, woman, and child, says Vedānta.

The nature of the Ātman, the divinity inherent in man, whose realization marks the culmination of the evolutionary process, forms the theme of the next five verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad which we shall study next.

FOUR

ĪŚĀ UPANISAD-3

The third verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad, as we have seen, warns the spiritual aspirant of the darkness and sorrow that envelop those who attempt to pass through life in ignorance of the Ātman. In the next five verses the Upaniṣad gives an obverse picture. It describes the nature of the Ātman, that divine Spirit which, as the Self of all, is in you and in me, which envelops everything in this world, even if it does not come within the field of our sense experience or of our awareness. The fourth and fifth verses read:

Anejadekaṁ manaso javīyo nainaddevā āpnuvan pūrvamarṣat; Taddhāvato’nyān atyeti tiṣṭhat tasmin apo mātariśvā dadhāti—

‘The Self is one. It is unmoving; yet It is faster than the mind. Thus moving faster, It is beyond the reach of the senses. Ever steady, It outstrips all that run. By Its mere presence, the cosmic energy is enabled to sustain the activities of living beings.’

Tadejati tannaijati taddūre tadvantike; Tadantarāsya sarvasya tadu sarvasyāsya bāhyatah—

‘It moves; It moves not. It is far; It is verily near. It is inside all this; It is verily outside all this.’

What profound ideas are contained in these and the next three verses! The more profound an experience the more indescribable it becomes; language fails; thought also fails. What remain are mere hints and suggestions. These verses are, therefore, a little difficult to understand. They are enigmatic and also paradoxical. Yet it is here, in these profound ideas, that we get those intimations of immortality that guide us onwards towards truth.

The Ātman or Self is one, says this verse. The Upaniṣads proclaim, here, and in many other passages, that the ultimate reality in man and nature is one, not two. The Ātman is infinite, immortal, it is that which has no limitation. How, then, can it be expressed? A thing which we experience with the senses can be described by certain references. We can refer to its length,

breadth, height, weight, colour, and so on. All definition is limitation, for by defining a thing we limit it; by stating that a thing

is of such and such quality, we imply also that it is not of such and such other quality. So an unlimited thing cannot be defined

at all because we cannot say where it ends and thus becomes demarcated from other things.

This is the nature of whatever is claimed to be infinite; but in the absence of definition, it is difficult of comprehension. If the

Ātman is the infinite reality, how to comprehend it? There is one thing in experience which can come to our assistance in under-

standing the Ātman, and that is the idea of ākāśa, space. When we try to define space, however, we also face difficulties; it implies

vastness, immensity. But we cannot give it any kind of location, space is, on the contrary, the very basis of the concept of location.

Space is here as well as there, it is inside as well as outside. In Vedāntic language, therefore, space or ākāśa is taken as the nearest

symbol of the Infinite and the Absolute, Brahman or Ātman.

Space-Time Continuum

In the last century, scientific thought used the word 'ether' to describe the content of space, and it was considered an essential

concept in science. But when the scientists tried to understand just what ether was, they came up against so many difficulties that

finally they banished it altogether from scientific vocabulary. In the twentieth century, however, we find that the ether concept has

come back in a new garb and with extended meanings. In place of the indefinable reality invoked by nineteenth-century science

to explain phenomena such as action at a distance, twentieth-century science reduces space into one of the two components of its

new reality—the continuum--of which time becomes the other component. In this new concept of a space-time continuum we have

the nearest approach in modern scientific thought to the infinite, indefinable, and immortal Self of Vedānta. The Self or Ātman,

of course, is not space-time continuum, but this scientific concept can be taken as the nearest and best symbol of the Ātman. In

fact, the ākāśa or space concept was used by Vedāntic thinkers as the best symbol of Brahman or Ātman precisely because of its

unlimited, ever-pure, and indestructible characteristics.

The human mind defines objects and events of the world of experience in terms of space and time. But what exactly are

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space and time? Modern scientific thought tells us that space and time have no absolute reality in themselves; they are relative concepts. It is only when they are welded together and become space-time that they become a useful concept for the purposes of twentieth-century science. Says Sir James Jeans (The New Background of Science, Second Edition, p. 104):

'Nature knows nothing of space and time separately, being concerned only with the four-dimensional continuum in which space and time are welded inseparably together into the product we may designate as "space-time". Our human spectacles divide this into space and time, and introduce a spurious differentiation between them, just as an astigmatic pair of spectacles divides the field of vision of a normal man into horizontal and vertical, and introduces a spurious differentiation between these directions. With astigmatic spectacles on, we incline our head and see the scene in front of us rearrange itself. Yet we know that nothing has happened to the objects in the scene. These are objective; our view of them through our spectacles is subjective.'

To define a thing or event in our experience means, in this view, to define it in terms of the space-time continuum, in which all objects and entities are melted into events. And an event, in the language of science today, is but a configuration of space-time. Space and time which were separate reference points in the definition of real objects and real events. now become the only reality as space-time, reducing all beings, objects, and events to its own passing configurations.

Thus it is this concept of space-time that comes closest to our idea of that which is eternal, spiritual, and infinite. in and beyond all finite entities and events. Space-time itself is described by modern science in much the same language that describes the Ātman in these verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad. It is inside everything, It is outside everything. It moves, and It moves not. It is one and indivisible, but It appears to be divided by the passing events of the world of sense experience.

Faster than the Mind

The theme of the Upaniṣads, clearly stated in these two verses, is that the Ātman is one and that It is everywhere. It is the One behind the many, sustaining the many. It is not that you have an Ātman and I have an Ātman and every individual has a separate Ātman. This is of course our commonsense view; but

it cannot stand philosophical scrutiny, say the Upaniṣads. And Buddha also said the same. When closely scrutinized, all the separate selves become reduced to mere notions, and, as such, into non-selves, revealing the Self as one. It appears as many when viewed through the limitations of the body and the senses. Being infinite and all-pervasive, It does not move; but It appears to move through association with the moving mind and the senses, through being viewed through the 'human spectacles', as Jeans expresses it. Then It is manaso javi yo, 'faster than the mind'. 'It is motionless, and yet It is faster than the mind.'

Some of us, perhaps, would dismiss that statement as contradictory, and therefore nonsense. To say that a thing is motionless and yet is faster than the mind sounds completely illogical. But nature is such that, as we proceed to its depths, such illogicalities reveal themselves more and more. Logic is, in fact, a very poor instrument to help us understand the depths of truth. Logic can put two and two together—but first we must get two and two! First fact, then logic; and if fact does not fit into logic, it is logic that has to go. Logic is a good servant, and that, too, for a restricted special job, but it is a bad master. It deals with and through laws of thought, laws such as identity, non-contradiction, causality, etc. These laws help us to order the world of our sense experience; but they break down at the deeper levels of experience. Even at the level of the electrons and protons of the physical universe they break down. It is no wonder that they become mostly inapplicable at the level of mind, and absolutely so at the level of Ātman.

This idea is expressed by this verse in a picturesque way by saying that neither the senses nor the mind could catch up with the Ātman, Itself being faster than both. We are in the presence of a profound paradox here, similar to those which atomic physics is familiarizing us with today, for example, the description of an electron both as a particle and as a wave. The Ātman is motionless, ever steady, yet It outstrips all that run. This language reminds us of Alice in Wonderland. Alice and the Queen were running hand in hand, and running faster and faster, so fast that they seemed to skim through the air. Yet when they stopped, breathless, Alice was surprised to find that they were still at the place wherefrom they had started. And the Red Queen's explanation was: 'Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.'

So the Ātman is faster than the mind, and yet it is motionless, steady. The senses move fast, and yet they cannot reach It. The senses, as we now know, move in terms of nerve impulse. In the physical universe, light is said to be the fastest thing that moves. The theory of relativity considers the speed of light as the ultimate limit of speed in physical nature. And yet mind or thought is faster than light. The senses, too, are known to travel very fast. When any part of the body such as the leg comes in contact with an external object, an impulse is transmitted from the point of contact to the brain. There is a little time-lag of about .01 second between the moment of contact and the moment when the information is received by the brain about six feet away. But this is not a very fast speed; it is slower than the speed of a jet plane. But thought is a force subtler than a nerve impulse, subtler than even light, and faster than both. But the Ātman travels faster than the senses, faster than light, and faster than even the mind. Like the space-time continuum of physical science, of which all motion, fast or slow, is but a configuration, the Self of man is the all-pervasive and infinite background of all the energies of the universe. As pure being and pure awareness, the Ātman is even the forerunner of the affirming and negating mind. Says Śañkarācārya in his illuminating comment on this verse:

Tasmin manasi brahmalokādīn drutam் gacchati saṁi, prathama-prāpta iva ātmacaitanyābhāso grhyate; ato manaso javīya ityāha—

Tat Tvam Asi

In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (VI. 8.7 to VI 16.3) the teacher tells the disciple again and again that the whole universe is centred in the Self:

Sa ya eṣo 'ṇimā, aitad ātmyaṁidam் sarvam; Tat satyam, sa ātmā, tat tvam asi, śvetaketo—

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD—3

105

The fourth and fifth verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad bring us the same message. In this Ātman is sustained the entire activity of the cosmos; the cosmic energy in which is unified all the forces of nature, is but an infinitesimal play of the Ātman within Itself. It is the universal constant in nature, controlling all its movements and processes. Again and again the Kaṭha Upaniṣad says about the Ātman (IV. 9):

Tad u nātyeti kuśacana, etat vai tat—

'This is That which nothing can surpass or transcend.'

Absolute Existence is also Absolute Awareness, Brahman is Ātman, say the Upaniṣads.

Studying man, the Upaniṣadic sages found that the finite man becomes more and more rarefied as we go deeper into him, revealing at last a transcendental and infinite reality as his true Self. Each one of us presents himself or herself as a finite man to the external world, but behind that finite man is an infinite and eternal man. Behind man the known, is 'man the unknown'. And this 'man the unknown' is a singular, as the 'man the known' is a plural, and man is essentially that singular reality. A mighty rock juts out of the ocean surface and we see only the projecting tip, but the rock itself is a huge mass reaching down to the very bottom of the ocean. So, too, is man—each one of us—a finite presentation on the surface, but infinite in the depths. It is this discovery that is summed up in the powerful language of the Upaniṣads, Tat tvam asi—'That thou art'. The Upaniṣads tell man that he is not finite; that he is not the limited, truncated thing he considers himself to be. He seems to be limited because he is viewed, or he views himself, through the limitations of the body and the senses. In his essential nature, however, he is pure being, pure consciousness, and bliss—sat-cit-ānanda—and, as such, he is one with all. Pure consciousness cannot be divided; it only appears to be divided by the manifesting media of bodies and minds. But It is ever one and unmoving—anejat ekam, as this verse puts it.

Says the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger (What Is Life?, Epilogue, pp. 90-91):

'Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular....Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that, what seems to be a

plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian Māyā).

Entering the Profound

The next verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad, verse five, amplifies this idea: 'It moves, and It moves not. It is far, and It is near. It is within all this, and It is also outside all this.' The Ātman, this verse says, may be said to move when it is viewed through the aspects of the changeful visible universe; in its own true nature, however, it does not move at all. Energy, in modern scientific thought, is conceived as existing in two forms—bottled-up energy and released energy; observable motion is predicated of the latter. Sri Ramakrishna often referred to these two aspects of Reality. One aspect is Brahman, the Absolute and the Infinite, the immobile and, therefore, the unmanifested. The other aspect is Śakti, Divine Energy, the creative power of the Absolute, expressing as vibration or movement. Sri Ramakrishna used the simile of a serpent. Brahman is the serpent coiled up, motionless; Śakti is the same serpent in motion, its energy released. Thus Brahman and Śakti, God and the universe, are not two separate realities, different from each other, but two aspects of one and the same thing, one reality looked at from two different points of view. Thus it is that, attempting to explain this fact, the Upaniṣad resorts to the most paradoxical language: 'It is far, and It is near, It is within all this, and It is also outside all this.'

And, as we have seen, the use of paradoxical language has invaded twentieth-century science as well. Up to the end of the nineteenth century, science spoke of realities which were finite, and clearly definable in terms of their primary and secondary qualities. In the twentieth century, however, science has broken through the crust of this finitude, through this determinate, predictable universe, and what is revealed then is so far removed from common experience that even the most refined scientific language can no longer express it precisely. For example, in trying to describe the nature of an electron or of a photon of light, twentieth-century scientists find themselves using language which is full of contradictions. A photon, the smallest unit of light, behaves sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave. So what is it? Is it a particle or is it a wave? Neither term is an adequate description, so a new name has to be coined. It is therefore known as a 'wavicle'!

That is one example of what happens when science delves deep into nature and reaches layers of experience where current terms and definitions cannot stand at all. The logic of the three dimensional world breaks down in the fourth dimension; or as Vedānta puts it, the logic of the waking state breaks down in the dream state. Science has now touched deeper levels of phenomena in the nuclear field, and these phenomena defy description in logical terms, in the precise mechanistic language of nineteenth-century science. To quote Sir James Jeans (The New Background of Science, pp. 2-6):

'The old philosophy ceased to work at the end of the nineteenth century, and the twentieth-century physicist is hammering out a new philosophy for himself. Its essence is that he no longer sees nature as something entirely distinct from himself. Sometimes it is what he himself creates or selects or abstracts; sometimes it is what he destroys.

'...We can only see nature blurred by the clouds of dust we ourselves make.... Thus the history of physical science in the twentieth century is one of a progressive emancipation from the purely human angle of vision....

'The physicist who can discard his human spectacles, and can see clearly in the strange new light which then assails his eyes, finds himself living in an unfamiliar world, which even his immediate predecessors would probably fail to recognise.'

This is exactly what happens when we enquire into the nature of man. What is man? Is he a definable entity? When we define any person, we say whether he is a man or a woman, we give his age, his weight, his colour, his educational qualifications, his activities and functions, his nationality, and so on. We can thus define a person by giving as many particulars about him as possible, and yet the question will assail us: Is that all? Has he been exhausted by any one of these definitions, or by all of them put together? Something in our hearts tells us that he has not. There is something of him left over. The definable aspect of him has alone been touched; the indefinable part remains untouched, the mysterious and profound depths of his being. This is infinite in dimension. This infinite man, 'man the unknown' as Alexis Carrel terms it, becomes revealed by a penetrating study of the finite man, 'man the known'.

The Upaniṣads are the supreme literature that deals with this deepest level of experience. Their theme is the infinite in man,

the infinite in nature, and the unity between the two. Aham brah-

māsmi–'I am Brahman (the spiritual Absolute, the All)'; sarvam

khalu idam brahma–'All this universe is verily Brahman'. The

supreme aim of the Upaniṣads is to help man in his struggle to

probe this mystery and gain an awareness of his infinite nature.

Through the pages of the Upaniṣads man is introduced to a wisdom

which lifts him above the pettiness and trivialities of his life, above

the finite self presiding over the routine of his humdrum existence.

Like a dweller in a dark and narrow lane of one of our cities

transported in a jet plane to the freedom and joy of unobstructed

movement in the infinite expanse of the sky, so is the finite man

taken up by the Upaniṣads from the limitations of his sense-bound

life to the true freedom and delight of the infinitude of his being.

It is at this point, as described in the next two verses, verses

six and seven, that the Īśā Upaniṣad raises us to the highest pinnacle

of human wisdom:

Yastu sarvāni bhūtāni ātmanyevānupaśyati;

Sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṁ tato na vijugupsate—

Yasmin sarvāni bhūtāni ātmaivābhūt vijānataḥ;

Tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śokaḥ ekatvam anupaśyataḥ—

The Upaniṣad now confronts the aspirant with the consequences

of the idea that the infinite Ātman is his true nature, the true

nature of every man and woman. The man who realizes himself

as the Ātman perceives also that he is one with all beings, that

none is separate from him. Then who can hate whom? He, the

Knower, the Self, is one with all; the only life-expression of this

vision is universal love and service free; love is a binding force,

whereas hatred proceeds from a sense of separateness. This realiza-

tion, according to Indian thought, modern as well as ancient, marks

the highest point of human excellence. These two verses convey a

message of the highest spirituality, where the highest vision be-

comes embodied as the highest character. All the great ones of

ISA UPANIṢAD-3

109

India have reacted to these two verses with a whole-hearted response. The saints and sages, intellectuals and devotees, of our country accord the highest place to this spiritual attainment. Through this realization man realizes his basic oneness with all men, with all beings; through this he achieves life fulfilment.

Tato na vijugupsate—‘thereby he ceases to hate any one’. Viju­gupsā means hatred; it also means narrow-mindedness and secre­tiveness. Narrow-mindedness, secretiveness, and hatred spring always from a sense of separateness. The sense of separateness gives rise to all kinds of selfish desires: the desire to hide one’s thoughts and possessions from others, the desire to exploit or overcome somebody else, and so on. But when this sense of separate­ness vanishes, such calculations also vanish, leaving in their place a feeling of universal friendship and benevolence towards other beings, and blessedness and peace within oneself. Hence the seventh verse ends with the question:

Tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śoka ekatvam anupaśyataḥ—

‘What delusion, what sorrow can there be for that seer who realizes this unity?’

Correcting the Error of Separateness

Grief and delusion come to us as a result of identifying our­selves with this limited body and mind. Thus identifying ourselves with the not-self aspect of our personality, we feel weak, helpless, limited, cut off from others; and in that state of weakness we make all sorts of mistakes, experience all kinds of tensions and griefs, and commit all types of sins. All these proceed directly from the delusion of separateness. All morality, all ethics and spirituality, tell us that we are one, basically one. Jesus says: ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ The Upaniṣads add: ‘For you are your neighbour.’ It is philosophy that proves to us that the sense of separateness is not true; it imparts to us the knowledge of oneness; and with this knowledge comes also morality and ethics, and we discover our true kinship with every man and woman, and with the whole of nature. ‘Knowledge leads to unity and ignorance to diversity’, says Sri Ramakrishna. So the purpose of spiritual knowledge is to destroy this delusion of separateness, this ‘original sin’ of ignorance, which cuts us off from the main stream of life. A river cut off from its main stream must be-

come stagnant; and the man cut off from the main stream of life stagnates and degenerates, and falls into error and grief and delusion. The seventh verse sings the glory of him who has overcome error and grief and delusion through his realization of unity:

Yasmin sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmaivābhūt vijānataḥ—

The capacity to realize this sameness comes to the human mind by discipline in social awareness as a citizen, and by discipline in inwardness as a spiritual seeker. This total discipline is religion, according to Vedānta: Nirdoṣaṁ hi samaṁ brahma—

Throughout the Upaniṣadic literature, and, indeed, in all the spiritual literature of India, there is this condemnation of the idea of separateness; the sense of man's spiritual kinship with all creation is emphasized over and over again. This basic oneness, this non-separateness, is the theme of modern scientific thought as well. The greatest discovery of science, in physics as well as in biology, is this sense of oneness between things and forces in nature, and between nature and man. Physics discovers inter-connections between terrestrial and celestial phenomena. Biology discovers linkages between living organisms, and between these and their natural environments. One organism is linked with another in a life-continuum. Where the surface view sees differences, the deeper scientific view discovers linkages. The theory of evolution, starting as a theory in biology, has become today cosmic in scope, and presents the grand design of all science. Says Lincoln Barnett (The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Mentor Edition, pp. 120-22):

"Through the centuries, the varied currents of discovery, theory, research, and reason have steadily converged, mingled, and flowed onward into ever widening and deepening channels. The first long advance was the reduction of the world's multifarious substances into 92 natural elements. Then these elements were reduced to a few fundamental particles. Concurrently the various "forces" in the world came to be recognized one by one as varying manifestations of electromagnetic force, and all the different kinds of radi-

ation in the universe—light, heat, X-rays, radio waves, gamma

rays—as nothing more than electromagnetic waves of varying wave

length and frequency. Ultimately the features of the universe distill-

ed down to a few basic quantities—space, time, matter, energy, and

gravitation. But in Special Relativity, Einstein demonstrated the

equivalence of matter and energy, and in General Relativity he

showed the indivisibility of the space-time continuum. The Unified

Field Theory now culminates and climaxes this coalescing process.

For from its august perspective the entire universe is revealed as

one elemental field in which each star, each atom, each wandering

comet and slow-wheeling galaxy and flying electron is seen to be

but a ripple or tumescence in the underlying space-time unity. And

so a profound simplicity supplants the surface complexity of nature.

The distinctions between gravitational force and electromagnetic

force, matter and energy, electric charge and field, space and time,

all fade in the light of their revealed relationships and resolve into

configurations of the four-dimensional continuum which is the uni-

verse. Thus all man's perceptions of the world and all his abstract

intuitions of reality merge finally into one, and the deep underlying

unity of the universe is laid bare.'

In countless ways every department of science today is ex-

tending the bounds of man's knowledge of cosmic unity. The

Upaniṣads discovered this basic unity through the study of mind,

and through inward meditation. Modern science started with the

exploration of the mysteries of external nature; but at the farthest

end of this exploration, it finds itself face to face with the mystery

of man and his mind, the deepest mystery of all. It is here that

we can discern the steady convergence of two of the greatest

human disciplines—ancient Vedānta and modern science. This

has been the faith of Vedānta, the faith that unity in variety is

the plan of nature and that man can approach this unity from the

outside as well as from the inside. From the point of view of

twentieth-century physics or biology, man himself emerges as the

greatest mystery of nature. To quote Barnett again (ibid., pp.

126-27):

'In the evolution of scientific thought one fact has become im-

pressively clear: there is no mystery of the physical world which

does not point to a mystery beyond itself. All highroads of intellect,

all byways of theory and conjecture lead ultimately to an abyss

that human ingenuity can never span. For man is enchained by

the very condition of his being, his finiteness and involvement in

nature. The farther he extends his horizons, the more vividly he

recognizes the fact that, as the physicist Niels Bohr puts it, “we

are both spectators and actors in the great drama of existence”.

Man is thus his own greatest mystery. He does not understand

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the vast veiled universe into which he has been cast for the reason that he does not understand himself.'

The study of the sciences of nature leads but to the study of the science of man in whom nature, after millions of years of blind evolution, has become self-aware and free. The study of this focus of awareness in man is beginning to attract serious scientific attention today. Says Eddington (The Philosophy of Physical Science, p. 5):

'We have discovered that it is actually an aid in the search for knowledge to understand the nature of the knowledge which we seek.'

Quoting the following passage from Blaise Pascal, 'In space, the universe engulfs me and reduces me to a pin-point; through thought, I understand the universe', Prince Louis de Broglie, an authority on quantum theory and wave mechanics, comments thus in his article on 'The Poetry of Science' contributed to the international monthly of London, Mirror, (No. 17):

'In that sublime pun lies the beauty, the poetry of pure science, and its high intellectual worth.'

Concluding his book Space, Time, and Gravitation, Eddington writes about the emergence of the mystery of man from the study of the mystery of nature:

'The theory of relativity has passed in review the whole subject-matter of physics. It has unified the great laws, which by the precision of their formulation and the exactness of their application have won the proud place in human knowledge which physical science holds today. And yet, in regard to the nature of things, this knowledge is only an empty shell—a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! it is our own.'

The Vedāntic study of the mystery of man has all the qualities of a scientific study, including the most important one of verifi-

ability. It is also systematic and thorough, leading the enquirer

through the various outer shells or sheaths or kośas, of person-

ality, to the abiding innermost being of man, the Ātman, which

is also the innermost being of the universe, Brahman. Brahma-

jñāna (wisdom) is sarvātmabhāva, realization of the Ātman as

the Self of all. This is the supreme source of strength for man:

Ātmānā vindate vīryam—‘man gains energy through the know-

ledge of the Ātman’, says the Kena Upaniṣad. The unique quality

of this strength, of this energy, is that it is entirely constructive

and beneficent, for it is the strength of love.

Practical Application

This is the wisdom of the Upaniṣads, and these two verses,

the sixth and seventh of the Īśā, express this wisdom most clearly.

The Bhagavad-Gītā, some centuries later, built its science of prac-

tical spirituality on this vision of equality. The modern world has

been experimenting with political, economic, and other forms of

equality during these three hundred years. Equality still remains

an unsolved problem in human thought. The only equality that

will not militate against reason and the wisdom of history is the

spiritual one. It is through the intensification of man’s spiritual

awareness, through the knowledge that he is the Ātman, that

equality will become a social fact. Socio-political measures to

establish an equalitarian social environment are worthwhile and

necessary; but their scope is limited, as history is teaching man

every day. Under such methods, every increase of human equa-

lity has meant a corresponding decrease of human freedom. This

social paradox can be cleared only if along with socio-political

measures there is increasing education of man in what Vedānta

calls ātmajñāna, the knowledge of man’s true Self. This was what

Swami Vivekananda taught in East and West. Dealing with the

social bearing of this realization, Swami Vivekananda says (Lecture

in New York on ‘The Real and the Apparent Man’, Complete

Works, Vol. II, pp. 286-87):

‘People are afraid that when they attain to it, when they

realize that there is but One, the fountains of love will be dried

up….People never stop to think that those who bestowed the

least thought on their own individualities have been the greatest

workers in the world. Then alone a man loves when he finds that

the object of his love is not any low, little, mortal thing. Then

alone a man loves when he finds that the object of his love is not

M.U.—8

a clod of earth, but is the veritable God Himself. The wife will love the husband the more when she thinks that the husband is God Himself. The husband will love the wife the more when he knows that the wife is God Himself. That mother will love the children more, who thinks that the children are God Himself. That man will love his greatest enemy who knows that that very enemy is God Himself. That man will love a holy man who knows that the holy man is God Himself, and that very man will also love the unholiest of men because he knows the background of that unholiest of men is even He, the Lord.

'Such a man becomes a world-mover for whom his little self is dead and God stands in its place. The whole universe will become transfigured to him....Instead of being a prison house, where we every day struggle and fight and compete for a morsel of bread, this universe will then be to us a playground. Beautiful will be this universe then! Such a man alone has the right to stand up and say, "How beautiful is this world!" He alone has the right to say that it is all good. This will be the great good to the world resulting from such realization, that instead of this world going on with all its friction and clashing, if all mankind today realize only a bit of that great truth, the aspect of the whole world will be changed, and in place of fighting and quarrelling, there would be a reign of peace.

'If one-millionth part of the men and women who live in this world simply sit down and for a few minutes say, "You are all God, O ye men, and O ye animals, and living beings, you are all the manifestations of the one living Deity!" the whole world will be changed in half an hour. Instead of throwing tremendous bombshells of hatred into every corner, instead of projecting currents of jealousy and of evil thought, in every country people will think that it is all He.'

In spite of being the home of Vedānta, India has nursed the delusion of human separateness more than any other country, and she has paid a heavy price for this in centuries of slavery. Swami Vivekananda was deeply pained at this, and he worked energetically to end this state of affairs. His scheme of Practical Vedānta had this end in view. In his lecture on 'Vedānta' delivered in 1897 in Lahore, he said (ibid., Vol. III, p. 427):

'Believe, therefore, in yourselves; and if you want material wealth, work it out; it will come to you. If you want to be intellectual, work it out on the intellectual plane, and intellectual giants you shall be. And if you want to attain to freedom, work it out on the spiritual plane, and free you shall be, and shall enter into Nirvāna, eternal Bliss.

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD–3

'But one defect which lay in the Advaita (philosophy of non-duality) was its being worked out so long on the spiritual plane only, and nowhere else; now the time has come when you have to make it practical. It shall no more be a rahasya, a secret, it shall no more live with monks in caves and forests, and in the Himalayas; it must come down to the daily everyday life of the people; it shall be worked out in the palace of the king, in the cave of the recluse, it shall be worked out in the cottage of the poor, by the beggar in the street, everywhere, anywhere it can be worked out.

'Therefore, do not fear whether you are a woman or a śūdra, for this religion is so great, says Lord Krṣṇa, that even a little of it brings a great amount of good. Therefore, children of the Āryas, do not sit idle. Awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached. The time has come when this Advaita has to be worked out practically. Let us bring it down from heaven unto the earth. This is the present dispensation.'

Underlying the outer differences between man and man is the unity of his inborn spiritual nature; and that has to be emphasized in the education of the individual. Vedānta does not deny the differences; they are there, but they belong to the surface. Deep down is unity. Whatever work he may do, whatever his position in life, every one has within himself an integral value which is not measured in terms of the money he earns or the social function he performs. That integral value is a spiritual value and proceeds from the Ātman. As the inalienable part of his nature, it is the basis of his true dignity and self-respect. The cobbler and the sweeper, the fisherman and the artisan are doing essential functions of society as the professor or the doctor, the lawyer or the administrator. These are various social functions which do not constitute the true measure of a man; that true measure is his innate spiritual nature, his true being, the Ātman, in which he has his infinite dimension. The measure of a man as a social functionary is the field for the play of the forces of inequality. These forces can be held in check and made harmless only by spiritual education. Such education will impart to every individual, high or low in the social view, a sense of his own integral worth and dignity, a sense which springs from an awareness of himself as the Ātman.

Without this spiritual education, modern industrial civilization, in spite of the claims made on behalf of modern democracy, will merely accentuate the differences between man and man, differences arising from knowledge, talents, wealth, and power; and

this will further serve to increase the sense of smallness in millions

of men who already feel small by the side of the gigantic machines

created by their science and technology. Without such education, the

exploitation of man by man will only increase; all sorts of subtle

exploitations will develop, more insidious than the old economic

exploitation. The ideal of general human happiness and welfare

will recede further and further, due to the coarsening of human

nature, in spite of greater and greater technical efficiency and

increasing wealth and comfort. Without spiritual education man

will not get the capacity to enjoy life as a master; he will be its

slave. In the words of Manu (Manusmṛti, VI. 82):

Nāhyanadhyātmaavit kaścit kriyāphalām upāśnute—

The more advanced a society in material wealth and social

welfare, the more unhappy it is; man's suffering does not decrease

with the increase of wealth, it merely changes its form, becoming

more and more subtle, and consequently more and more unbear-

able. Sixty years ago, Swami Vivekananda warned the western

world that this would happen, that it must happen, so long as man

remains ignorant of his spiritual nature.

There are not wanting thinkers in the West who are aware of

the dangers of this objectification of human nature, the danger

of man's ignoring his subjectivity. One of these thinkers writes

in the Reader's Digest ('The Art of Being Nobody', by Eric Man-

ners, May 1953):

'There is a dangerous threat in the air these days—the threat

of our being thought for, ruled, regulated, pushed around, made

into Things. There is only one weapon against that. The weapon

is the Self—the unique and incalculable reality that is a human

soul.'

'What is the truth about ourselves?', asked Eddington in a

talk on the B.B.C., and proceeded to reply: 'We may incline to

various answers: We are a bit of star gone wrong. We are com-

plicated physical machinery—puppets that strut and talk and laugh

and die as the hand of time turns the handle beneath. But let us

remember that there is one elementary inescapable answer: We

are that which asks the question.'

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD–3

117

We are that which asks the question—what a profound ob-

servation! Expressed in the Vedāntic language, it means that we

are the dr̥k, the seer , and not the dr̥śyam, the seen; the subject, not

the object; the Self, not the non-Self.

If we wint to avoid the sufferings and sorrows arising from

nervous diseases and mental tensions, we have to educate our-

selves to the fact that we are not the body, nor the senses, nor

the mind, nor the intellect, but that we are the Ātman, the eternally

pure, eternally awakened, and eternally free Self—nitya-śuddha-

buddha-mukta-svabhāva paramātman, as Vedānta expresses it. This

knowledge will at once lift us up above the trivialities of sensate

existence and confer on us universality of vision and sympathy.

This is the great work that Vedānta has set before itself to per-

form in the modern age.

The next verse of the Īśā Upaniṣad, the eighth, gives us another

majestic and poetic description of the nature of the ultimate

Reality:

Sa paryagāt śukram akāyam avraṇam asnāviram śuddha-

pāpaviddham;

Kavirmanīṣī paribhūḥ svayaṁbhūḥ yāthātathyato arthān

vyadadhāt śāśvatībhyaḥ samābhyaḥ—

‘He, the self-existent One, is everywhere—the pure one, without

a (subtle) body, without blemish, without muscles (a gross body),

holy and without the taint of sin; the all-seeing, the all-knowing,

the all-encompassing One is He. He has duly assigned their res-

pective duties to the eternal Prajāpatis (cosmic powers).’

The nature of the Ātman is holy and pure, free from the taint

of sin. This is India’s eternal gospel of universal human redemp-

tion; Vedānta does not accept that any particular historical

event can become the gospel of human redemption acceptable uni-

versally. A gospel derivei from human nature can alone become

a universally acceptable gospel of redemption. This is what Jesus

meant when he taught: ‘The kingdom of Heaven is within you.’

Here is another beautiful epithet of the Ātman: Kavih, the

poet, the seer. He is the great poet and the world is his poem,

coming out in rhymes and verses. The word kavi, poet, means

not only one who composes verses, but one who is far-seeing, krāntu-

darśī, as Śaṅkarācārya puts it, one who has insight and can see

and grasp the inner significance of things. The great poets of the

world share this virtue with the Ātman. Poetry brings a message

from the heart of nature. What to the prosaic and humdrum

mind may seem ordinary and insignificant, to the poet will be

charged with meaning and significance. This thought has been

neatly expressed in an English verse depicting the poetic vision

of Shakespeare:

The poem hangs on the berry bush

When comes the poet's eye;

The street begins to masquerade

When Shakespeare passes by.

Every act, every experience, every situation is full of poetic

suggestion to a poet; his sensitive mind sees meaning and signi-

ficance in them. There is no event or thing in nature which does

not ensoul the Soul of the universe; the poet catches the divine

pulsations of nature by momentary elevations to kinship with the

divine Poet. The ordinary individual, on the contrary, sees only

prosaic, discrete facts and events.

This Ātman is the source of the orderliness in nature, says the

verse: Yāthātathyato arthān vyadadhāt śāśvatībhyah samābhyah.

The unalterable laws of the cosmos are an expression of its divine

ground. The universe is ruled by law; the sun, the stars, the

nebulae, fire, lightning, rain, everything in nature obeys law. It

is law that keeps all things within their limits, so that they do

not overstep those limits and cause chaos.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, said

Shelley. As the poet of poets, God is the greatest law-giver; He

gives Himself in His law. Says the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (IV.

4.22):

Sa vā eṣa mahānaja ātmā...seturvidharaṇa eṣāṁ lokānām

asambhedāya—

'This, verily, is that great birthless Self...an embankment that

se: ves as the boundary to keep the different worlds apart.'

In the Vedas this concept of law was described as ṛta, and ṛta

means order, rhythm. Within the heart of nature there is order-

liness, although on the surface everything may appear disorderly

or even chaotic. A boy opening up a machine to see its inside

will find what appears to him to be a chaotic jumble of wires; but

to the expert there is order in the arrangement of the wires, and

he understands the significance and function of each one of them;

through such knowledge he controls their operation as well. Simi-

larly, in nature, everything functions according to law; and this

law reveals the presence of the Divine within. This Divine in

the heart of nature is not a dualistic concept, a god sitting some-

where above the clouds and ruling the world from there; it is the

Ātman, the Self of man and the universe, whose subtle presence

the mind of man traces and unveils through the objects and events

of the universe and the laws that hold them together.

The Īśā Upaniṣad commenced with the declaration that the

universe is spiritual through and through: Īśāvāsyamidam sarvam.

It then taught man to desire to live the full span of human life

and to 'utilize the same to realize this truth and be free; without

this realization, it warned, life would be lived in darkness and

sorrow, and rendered meaningless and sterile. Then it expound-

ed the nature of this divine presence in man and nature and show-

ed how its realization completely lifts the veil of delusion and

sorrow from the heart of man, converting it into an abode of peace

and bliss and universal benevolence.

The Upaniṣads called this all-pervading spiritual reality by the

name of Ātman; this reality is beyond speech and thought, being

the Self of all; but it is also the idam, the 'this', the universe,

and as such, the object of all speech and thought. It is thus both

the 'within' and the 'without' of things, in the language of Teil-

hard de Chardin, both the transcendent and the immanent reality.

But the term 'Ātman' bears the impress of the search for discover-

ing the 'within', the pratyak tattva, of the universe, through a

penetrating study of the human personality, which is a microcosm

in itself. The study of the 'without' of the universe by the Upani-

ṣads had earlier yielded the concept and term Brahman, the One

behind the many. This concept passed through various stages of

clarification and enrichment; it meant prayer; it meant a mono-

theistic god; it meant a logical absolute behind the relative uni-

verse. Finally, the Upaniṣads, viewing it from their knowledge of

the 'within' of things, the Ātman, discovered the unity of the

'without' and the 'within' in a reality which, as Brahman-Ātman,

is both transcendent and immanent, is a given fact of experience,

and is not a mere concept or logical presupposition. Through the

120

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

knowledge of the Ātman, of the 'within' of things, the Upaniṣads

converted the concept of Brahman from a monotheistic deity and

a logical absolute to a spiritual experience—anubhava avasānam—

as expressed by Śaṅkarācārya in his Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya (I. ii. 2).

Similarly, through a penetrating study of the phenomenon of

cit, jñāna, or samvit, awareness, knowledge or consciousness, the

Upaniṣads also transformed the Ātman concept from a word mean-

ing a jīva or soul, an entity possessing consciousness as a quality,

and involving plurality, through a term meaning the antarātman,

the pure and unattached inner Self of man, also involving plurality,

into one meaning the Paramātman or Sarvātman, the pure and per-

fect, eternal and non-dual Self of all and Self of the universe.

Ātman is pure Being and Awareness; Brahman is pure Being and

Awareness; both are one. Awareness and the object of awareness

are non-different, as are mind and its presentations. As in physical

science, the objects and entities and events in the space-time con-

tinuum become merely its passing configurations, space-time con-

tinuum alone being real, so also, taking existence as a totality, the

world of mind and matter, of souls and bodies, becomes revealed

as a mass of pure Awareness or pure Consciousness, vijñānaghana

or cidghana, of which all the objects, entities, and events of the

physical and non-physical worlds become passing configurations.

These landmarks in spiritual and philosophical thought are reg-

istered in some of the famous passages of the Upaniṣads:

Says the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (II. 4.12):

Idaṁ mahadbhūtam anantam apāraṁ vijñānaghana eva—

'This great Being is endless and without any limit. It is a mass

of consciousness only.'

Says the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (VIII. 3.4):

Etat amṛtam abhayam etat brahmeti—

'This is Brahman, the Immortal and the Fearless.'

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (III. 4. 1) proclaims the Absolute

as a given fact of experience, as the innermost Self of man:

Yat sākṣāt aparokṣāt brahm ya ātmā sarvāntaraḥ taṁ me

vyācakṣva—

'The Brahman which is immediate and direct, which is the inner-

most Self of all—expound that Brahman to me.'

ĪŚA UPANIṢAD-3

121

The Kaṭha Upaniṣad speaks of the realization of the unity of

the Self (IV. 15):

Yathodakaṁ suddhe suddhamāsiktam tādrgeva bhavati;

Evaṁ munervijānata ātmā bhavati gautama—

And the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad (verse 2) expounds the spiritual

unity of the universe in a majestic equation:

Sarvam hyetat brahma; ayam ātmā brahma—

If Brahman and Ātman are one, if the world is spiritual

through and through, then certain consequences follow for the life

and destiny of man. It at once unifies the external and the in-

ternal, the secular and the spiritual, fields of man's life; it unifies

science and religion. The discords and conflicts arising from par-

tial views of reality become resolved in the light of this total view,

making possible a comprehensive spirituality in which the believer

and the non-believer, the theist and the agnostic, the religious

man and the scientist, the contemplative and the worker, become

transformed into fellow-seekers of truth.

How the vision of human life and action becomes transformed

in the light of this philosophy is expounded by Swami Vivekananda

in his lecture on 'The Ideal of a Universal Religion' (Complete

Works, Vol. II, p. 381):

'Through high philosophy or low, through the most exalted

mythology or the grossest, through the most refined ritualism or

arrant fetishism, every sect, every soul, every nation, every reli-

gion, consciously or unconsciously, is struggling upward, towards

God; every vision of truth that man has, is a vision of Him and of

none else.'

Expounding the all-inclusiveness of this vision, Swami Viveka-

nanda further says (ibid., pp. 385-86):

'What-I want to propagate is a religion that will be equally

acceptable to all minds; it must be equally philosophic, equally

emotional, equally mystic, and equally conducive to action. If

professors from the colleges come, scientific men and physicists,

they will court reason. Let them have it as much as they want. There will be a point beyond which they will think they cannot go, without breaking with reason. ...Similarly, if the mystic comes, we must welcome him, be ready to give him the science of mental analysis, and practically demonstrate it before him. And, if emotional people come, we must sit, laugh, and weep with them in the name of the Lord; we must "drink the cup of love and become mad". If the energetic worker comes, we must work with him, with all the energy that we have. And this combination will be the nearest approach to the ideal of a universal religion. ...To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion.'

The next six verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad, which we shall take up next, will expound to us the implications of such a philosophy for religion, life, and character. Religion in India, as also elsewhere, has experienced a recurring opposition, often irreconcilable, between the path of the mystic and that of the man of action, between the claims of the beyond and the claims of this world. These verses pointedly seek to resolve this opposition in the light of the synoptic and total vision of reality achieved in Vedānta. But what this Upaniṣad does is only to offer hints and suggestions. It was left to the Bhagavad-Gītā of a later age to capture the energy and charm of this vision in a comprehensive statement of practical spirituality.

FIVE

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD–4

In verses four to eight of the Īśā Upaniṣad, as we have seen, there is the pronouncement of the Vedāntic vision of life. How does life appear from the point of view of the highest spiritual realization? The Upaniṣad told us that when a man realizes the Ātman, the divine Self within, he sees the same Self in every being and, because of this realization, he does not hate anyone; for there is none separate from him. He achieves equal-mindedness everywhere. As a result of this realization he also becomes free from all delusion and all sorrow. Delusion and sorrow, which afflict a person who sees things in their separateness, cannot afflict him when he realizes the spiritual unity of all existence.

As I said before, the whole philosophical thought of India has this great lesson to teach us—the realization of the One behind the many, the One in the many. The vision of the One is philosophy. Armed with that knowledge we can handle the many in the most consummate manner possible. Sri Ramakrishna tells us: Advaita jñān āñcale bendhe jā icchā tāi karo—‘Tie the knowledge of Advaita, the knowledge of this Oneness, in the fold of your cloth, and do whatever you please.’ Whatever be the field of our activity, whatever be the mode of our life, we shall never miss the goal. This knowledge of the true nature of man is sought to be impressed upon us by these great Upaniṣads. What a ringing declaration is given in the seventh verse: Yasmir. sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmaivābhūt vijānatah; tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śokaḥ ekatvam anupasyataḥ!

When we realize this oneness 'how can there be sorrow and delusion?' How can there be hatred which is born out of a sense of separateness? Such things cannot be; their roots consisting of spiritual blindness have been burnt in the fire of spiritual awareness.

True Nobility

Human society will get a new integration as a fruit of this vision. We in India speak of national integration today; but it is integration limited to one nation. But the Vedāntic concept

of integration goes beyond the merely national to embrace the whole of humanity in its sweeping vision of kinship and oneness. It has thus a global reference. The sentiments of these five verses, therefore, are appreciated and honoured by thinkers both in the East and in the West. In Vedānta, however, it is a spiritual vision; it is not a theory, a concept, or a programme of expediency. It is the achievement of universality by individual men and women. Man achieves it when he transcends the barriers which his little ego, with its instrument of the sense-bound mind, has erected around itself. The ego separates, but behind the ego is the Ātman, the true Self of man, which is also the true Self of all.

The transcendence of this ego is the whole purpose of religion morality, and the social process. Vedānta teaches that the universal is a given fact of experience. Therein is man's true self-hood. But he in his ignorance cuts it up into exclusive particulars by erecting narrow domestic walls. He cuts it up into finite loyalties of caste and creed, race and sect. Remove these ego-built limitations and the universal in him shines untarnished, pure, and whole. All education, all training, all culture, according to Vedānta, are but the methods by which this ever-present universal is liberated from the temporary limitations of the finite and the particular. The more educated a person and the more cultured, the more he sees this oneness of things; this vision finds expression in life in increase of love, compassion, and service. The sign of true culture is comprehension and compassion. Violence and wickedness, exploitation and egoism, are indications of un-culture, indications of a truncated vision. Vedānta calls these the fruits of a smallness of mind, littleness of character. One of the oft-quoted Sanskrit verses has this for its theme—the littleness and greatness of man:

Ayaṁ nijaḥ paro veti gañanā laghucetasām; Udāracaritānāṁ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam—

Where is the limit of man's being? Can the skin be his limitation? Can the body be his limitation? Can his sect and creed and church and nationality be his limitation? Can these ever really limit the dimension of his true nature? Such limitations are

experienced only when we are ignorant of our true nature. But

as we overcome our ignorance, we also overcome our limitations

and realize ourselves as we truly are—infinite and immortal. This

infinite being of man is finding limited expressions through the

body and the senses, through political and social systems, through

religious sects and creeds. But it can never be exhausted in any

one of these. It is in them but it also transcends them. The little

man sheds his littleness and realizes himself as the Ātman; he

realizes himself as the Infinite, as the Eternal.

This is the teaching of Vedānta on the subject of man.

Vedānta seeks to liberate this universal value embedded in

each individual; and today the world is in urgent need of this type

of education. The whole trend of modern civilization and cul-

ture is towards this global unity, towards the emergence of the

universal man, and here is the philosophy that stands sponsor to

all such effort and struggle. That is why Vedānta holds such

a great fascination for thinking minds in all parts of the world.

No sentiment of triviality, of limitation, of finitude, of exclu-

siveness, of separateness, vitiates its language and thought. It

speaks in terms of man as such, not as man cut up into creeds and

sects and political systems. What a beautiful conception of man

this is! It is beautiful because it is true; and therefore it is also

good, beneficial. It is, in the Vedāntic language,—satyam, śivam,

and sundaram—true, good, and beautiful. A new vision of man

and his greatness is vouchsafed here, leading to an effort steadily

to realize that greatness, that dimension of universality, on the

part of man everywhere.

The ‘Universe Souls’

Two types of minds are there—one the laghucetas—the little

mind, and the other the udāracarita—the great mind. This praise

of the udāracarita is not confined merely to our literature; but our

history has produced a galaxy of great men and women who ex-

pressed this value of universality in their lives and characters.

The sages of the Upaniṣads, and Kṛṣṇa, Buddha, Śaṅkara, Caitanya,

Nānak, Kabīr and a host of lesser known luminaries in the past,

and Rammohan Roy, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Gandhi in

our own time, were such udāracaritās. They always considered

themselves as belonging to the world. Thus this noble concept of

man did not remain merely a concept in India but it assumed flesh

and blood again and again in the lives of men and women whom the nation adores as its true leaders and exemplars.

When Jesus Christ tells us 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', we are in the presence of a similar enunciation. It is the greatest teaching of ethics and morality. We hear this teaching; it is clear in itself; but the heart of man which receives this teaching is not always clear. On hearing this pronouncement, the human heart whispers a question to itself: Who is my neighbour? And the reply man gets to this question depends on his notion of himself. To the self-centred man the neighbour is practically himself; all others are as one's own satellites, to be exploited in one's own interest. That is the answer of the crude human heart to this question. Here is man in the raw state; he needs to be educated and cultured into that largeness and fullness of attitude where he finds his neighbour in everyone, everywhere, and loves all and serves all. This education is a long process, taking man step by step to an expansion of his neighbour awareness from himself to his family, thence to the clan, tribe, caste, and nation, to reach out eventually to the whole of humanity, nay, to all existence. Breaking down all barriers, the neighbourliness idea marches on to embrace the whole world. Behind this external march of the idea, and sustaining it at every step, is an internal march of the self of man from the finite little ego to the infinite universal Ātman. This unlimited expansion of man's selfhood, resulting in infinite expansion of his understanding and sympathy, is what results in udāracarita. When a man achieves that, he achieves a towering personality. He does not remain a citizen of one nation, he becomes a citizen of the whole world; one of the greatest achievements of India has been the production of what Romain Rolland terms 'Universe Souls' (Life of Ramakrishna, p. 22, Fourth Impression). He refers to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda as:

'...two men who have won my regard because with incomparable charm and power they have realised this splendid symphony of the Universal Soul' (ibid., p. 8).

When Swami Vivekananda was in America, several saw in him one of themselves. In a letter dated 19 February 1896 one of his American disciples wrote half-humorously to a journal in India thus (Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples, Fourth Edition, p. 393):

‘By the way, India had better at once make clear her title

to the ownership of the Swami. They are about to write his biog-

raphy for the national Encyclopaedia of the United States of

America, thus making of him an American citizen. The time may

come when even as seven cities disputed with each other for the

honour of having given birth to Homer, seven countries may claim

our Master as theirs, and thus rob India of the honour of produc-

ing one of the noblest of her children.’

The great ones of India have impressed this value of the uni-

versal into the Indian cultural experiment; and that explains the

continued existence and vitality of India. If India had gone in for

any of the trivial, narrow attitudes, she would have died long ago.

She has given to man the vision of something pure, glorious, eter-

nal, and fearless about the nature and destiny of man. Such an

expression of the glory of man was found in our age in Sri Rama-

krishna who lived in the Dakshineswar temple, which is hardly

four miles to the north of Calcutta. There was enacted, a few de-

cades ago, a mighty drama of the universal, from which proceeded

the most creative and powerful ideas capable of composing the

distractions of man in the modern age. The literature and thought

of the ‘Universe Souls’ of ancient India which the Upaniṣads are,

therefore, not of mere academic interest; they carry the bread

of life to all men. Modern man has to be nourished on this bread

so that he may grow into that largeness and fullness which is his

birthright. This is true education, positive, purposive, and peren-

nial. That India bears some impress of such an education from her

‘Universe Souls’ of past and present times is proved by the fact that

no man can aspire to be a leader of the Indian people for long if he

speaks in terms of narrow loyalties, of selfish chauvinistic ideas. But

if a leader arises expounding broad ideas and large sympathies,

people appreciatively and respectfully listen, and try to follow

him as best as they can. The nation has been conditioned that way

by this philosophy.

Theory to Flow into Practice

We have thus a great philosophy; we have been conditioned

by it to some extent these millennia of our history, and we have had

also the inestimable privilege of guidance by ‘Universe Souls’ again

and again. But we have to confess that we have failed our philoso-

phy and our guides in many instances. Our weaknesses did not

allow us to function long in the rarefied atmosphere of this philo-

sophy. So we paid holy allegiance to it, and went our own less

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holy ways to conduct our lives at the easier levels of the little

self and the trivial ego. This mis-education has gone so far that

today our society contains the largest number of self-centred men

and women in all the world. Our homage to these great philo-

sophical ideas has been reduced to lip-homage or homage proceed-

ing from national vainglory. This disparity between high

philosophy and low practice or no practice, has been with us for

quite a long time. Swami Vivekananda marked it and felt deeply

over it. He has referred to it in one of his beautiful epistles written

from America to a disciple in India (Complete Works, Vol. V,

p. 15):

'No religion on earth preaches the dignity of humanity in such

a lofty strain as Hinduism and no religion on earth treads upon the

necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism.'

We profess the highest philosophy and we indulge in low be-

haviour. Why? Swami Vivekananda diagnosed this as lack of

will power to carry idea into practice. Ideas became short-circuit-

ed; practice never got sustenance from the lofty idea. So, on one

side was practice untouched by the blessings of idea, and on the

other side was idea waiting to express, but unable to express, in

action and behaviour, and, therefore, becoming sterile. An idea

which does not find expression in practice tends to become sterile.

It then becomes an enemy and not a friend, however lofty it may

be.

The next six verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad deal with this subject

of the harmonizing of idea and practice, of the inner and the outer.

Where these do not co-operate, life will derive no blessing from

either of them. But if they reinforce each other, we shall see the

finest flowering of philosophy in perfection of character. We have

need to assimilate the ideas of this philosophy and raise the tone

of our character. If I accept the truth of this philosophy that we

are all basically non-separate from each other, then the only way

in which I can express that acceptance is through a life suffused

with the spirit of love and service. It is this spirit of love and

service that acts as a thread to unite all men and women. The

spirit of love pulsating in the heart will always seek expression in

little acts of service. 'The mother's love for the child does not

remain merely as a sentiment or as a matter of mere talk, but

finds continued expression in acts of service to the child. The

same thing applies to all other spheres of human relationship. A

sentiment becomes mere sentimentalism, says psychologist William McDougall, if it has no object to express itself on.

Renunciation and Service

Swami Vivekananda taught us to express our age-old spiritual idealism in forms of love and service to man, to God in man. Says he (Complete Works, Vol. V, p.228):

'Renunciation and service are the twin ideals of India; intensify her in those channels, the rest will take care of itself.'

When we can assimilate these twin ideas of renunciation and service, tyāga and sevā, we shall achieve the richness and steadiness of the Vedāntic character. Tyāga, renunciation, is the theme of the very first verse of this Upaniṣad: tena tyaktena bhuñjīthā—'enjoy life through renunciation'. We are asked to rise above our little ego, the grasping self, and express our true Self, the Self that realizes its oneness with all, and gives itself away to all, in sentiments of love and acts of service. When we achieve this, even our little acts become potent means of transforming the human situation into a pattern of beauty. Self-seeking and exploitation are forms of ugliness. Their presence in a man bespeaks of a lack of vision and of a lack of discipline in terms of what is highest and best in him. This ugliness seems to have invaded our social life in an aggressive form after our political liberation. Political independence has tended to liberate our lower self and thwart the expression of our higher self. There is an increase of self-centredness and lack of self-discipline, and a general lack of concern for the other individual. These social maladies have resulted in much social unhappiness and a retreat from the national goal of general welfare and fulfilment. The nation is living on its inherited spiritual assets which, however, are fast dwindling in the absence of continuous replenishments. The dwindling of our foreign exchange resources is a serious matter for our developing economy today; but far more serious is this fast dwindling of our moral and spiritual assets. As our economic and trade policies are energetically tackling the first, our education should vigorously tackle the second.

Education as Assimilation of Ideas

This is the blessing that the Upaniṣads hold for us. They will help us to continually build up our moral and spiritual assets and,

through them, even our material assets. They will enrich man's

inner life by helping him to build the structure of his higher per-

sonality above his given personality. The latter is the undisciplined

ego which is always of a grasping nature, which desires to exploit

others for its own benefit, and which is the perpetual focus of ten-

sion and sorrow. This little ego must be transcended, making for the

manifestation of the true Self. Sri Ramakrishna refers to the first as

the kaccā, raw, ego, and to the second as the pakkā, ripe, ego. The

kaccā ego must be made to give place to the pakkā ego. That is true

education and that again is true religion. It is such an education

that fits man for a truly civilized, truly cultured, existence. Sings

Wordsworth in The Excursion:

And that unless above himself he can

Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!

Our society today must bend its energies to get such an edu-

cation for itself. Man in the Indian context needs to be inspired

by the Vedāntic vision of human excellence and the Vedāntic will

to realize that excellence in character and conduct as taught by

the Gītā (Chapter XVIII, verses 20, 30 and 33). The study of the

Gītā will be a fascinating experience after the study of the Upa-

niṣads. It is the essence of all the Upaniṣads, of all the Vedas,

Samastavedārtha sārasaṅgrahabhūtam, as Śaṅkarācārya tells us

in the introduction to his commentary on the Gītā. It is one thing

to have a philosophy, even to read it and master it, and quite a

different thing to live it and express it in forms of life, conduct,

and behaviour. Whatever may be said of other philosophies,

Vedānta shines best not in study and discussion, but in life appli-

cation. It is so because, in the words of Śaṅkara, (Brahma-Sūtra

Commentary: I. ii. 2): anubhava avasānatvāt—‘it finds its con-

summation in experience’. As Sri Ramakrishna used to put it:

Some have heard of milk, some have seen it, some have touched

it, and some have drunk it and assimilated it. Among these, the

last alone have been benefited by the milk; for they alone were

nourished and strengthened by it. Such is Vedānta; its ideas have

the power to nourish and strengthen man, but only when taken in

and assimilated. They are not meant for mere study or argument,

mental ornamentation, or intellectual exercise.

This capacity for assimilation of ideas comes to man from self-

discipline and self-discipline alone. Tapasi brahma vijijñāsā—

‘Seek to know Brahman through tapas, self-discipline,’ says the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (III. 2). Where there is lack of this self-discipline, there will also be lack of this capacity to understand, appreciate, and assimilate high ethical and spiritual ideas. Our nation today needs to generate within itself this capacity to assimilate lofty values and ideas. We have the historically developed capacity to grasp and keep ideas. We have developed a love for ideas and a tremendous memory to keep them in our minds. But for lack of will and the humanistic urge, they have remained in our heads static and sterile; they have failed to percolate into the heart and the nervous system, into the bones and the muscles, to find expression in lived experience. That is a different type of experience; and we need to enter into this type of experience to be able to taste the fruit of the Vedāntic character—clear vision, broad sympathies, and intense practicality. Where there is only memory and no assimilation, man becomes merely a storehouse of ideas, and a storehouse is just a storehouse, and nothing more. Swami Vivekananda taught us more than sixty years ago to aim, in our education, at the assimilation of ideas, and not to be content to be their storehouse. Says he (Lecture on ‘The Future of India’; Complete Works, Vol. III, p. 302):

‘Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. Yathā kharaścandanabhāravāhī bhārasya vettā na tu candanasya—“The ass carrying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of the sandalwood.” If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopaedias are the Ṛṣis.

To carry ideas in the head and not to know their value is to be an ass carrying sandalwood, says Swami Vivekananda, quoting the famous poet Bhartrhari. As the English saying goes: The spoon does not know the taste of the soup. Our education today, I am afraid, has such a tendency. A student or a citizen in our country feels the weight of knowledge in his head but knows very little of its value. He has studied history but his behaviour does not express its values or its lessons. History has told him that for want of national unity, for want of broad ideas, in the absence of social justice, his country lost its freedom again and again. It has suffered humiliations and oppressions from many

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foreign invasions for a thousand years. Having studied all this,

he behaves in public and private in ways calculated to jeopardize

the freedom and national unity won after decades of struggle.

He did not extract from his study an emotional identification

with the good and ill fortune of his people so as to make of his

life, conduct, and character, a guarantee of his nation's unity,

strength, and progress.

Man-making and Character-building Education

The same situation obtains in other fields of study like logic

or law, science or civics, philosophy or religion. To study law and

behave lawlessly, to study civics and be innocent of the social sense,

to study the sciences and be innocent of the scientific outlook and

temper, is a travesty of education. Such an education does not

impart dynamism to ideas; it does not result in force of character,

richness of personality, and efficiency in life and action. These

are the product of digested and assimilated ideas, just as physical

efficiency and physical strength are the product of digested and

assimilated food. Undigested food becomes poison and an enemy

of the body. Similarly, undigested knowledge also becomes poison

and an enemy of the mind. Vanity, cleverness, and other similar

mental traits are the poisonous fruits of undigested knowledge.

Where there is assimilation of knowledge, there can be no vanity;

our literature tells us that vidyā dadāti vinayam—‘knowledge gives

humility’. ‘When the corn is ripe’, says Sri Ramakrishna, ‘it bends

down; when it is not ripe it stands erect.’ When there is ripe-

ness of knowledge in wisdom, man becomes humble; when that is

not achieved, vanity and pride reign. Education must help us to

gather knowledge and to digest and assimilate it; even a fraction

of this digestion gives us immediate strength. The whole nation

will feel the pulsations of a new strength and pure resolve if even

a little of this assimilative process finds a place in its education.

This was the dream and passion of Swami Vivekananda who taught

nation-building through man-making.

When we become men in this sense, we shall feel the galvanic

touch of the ideas of our philosophy. They will start moving men,

and also the world around men. The opening words of this Upa-

niṣad that God is in everything, or the words of Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā

that He, the Lord, resides in the heart of all beings, will no more

remain sacred words and pious sentiments, but will enter into

our blood-stream and our nerve-currents, and make us lovers and

servants of the God in man, irrespective of caste or creed, race or

sex.

Swami Vivekananda awakened India to an awareness of this

great national destiny. He preached this vision of human unity

through God everywhere, in East and West alike. He felt that

the dark night of human separation with its injustices, sorrows.

and sufferings was past and that his country was on the threshold

of a great era when Vedāntic ideas will be realized in life and

society, both within the country as well as without.

India needs the vision of her Vedānta to canalize the energies

of her awakening to constructive channels of human service every-

where. The teachings of the Upaniṣads need to be assimilated by

her children so that they may become strong to render this service

to themselves and to the world. Vivekananda felt that the great

ideas of Vedānta which had till now been in the possession of

a minority, realized and re-authenticated by a gifted few in every

age, should now become the property of every one in every country,

as it so adequately answers to the intellectual and spiritual de-

mands of this scientific age. He held that this was India's gift,

as physical science was the gift of the West, to the modern world.

So far as India is concerned, Vedānta as expounded by Viveka-

nanda is the philosophy that stands sponsor to the highest aspira-

tions of the Indian mind today, both in its spiritual and secular

aspects; for modern science, technology, and social thought are

but practical Vedānta according to him. Vedānta does not see

any irreconcilable opposition between the sacred and the secular,

between faith and reason. The assimilation of the spirit of Ved-

ānta and modern science—Vivekananda placed this at the core of

his scheme of Indian education. It is thus that we can ensure

man's total welfare, worldly as well as spiritual, social as well as

trans-social.

The Synthesis of All Experience

We shall now take up verses 9 to 14 of the Īśā Upaniṣad, verses

which, through hints and suggestions, seek to resolve the opposition

between work and worship, between action and mystical contem-

plation. The language of these verses is obscure. Great com-

mentators of the past have given us explanations of these verses

according to their own lights. But in spite of their high standing

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in the spiritual and philosophical world of India, not one of these commentaries does adequate justice to the thought of these verses.

The commentators themselves, it must be said, were conscious of this fact. They had the additional disadvantage of having had to view these verses against the background of their own special theological standpoints and contemporary doctrinal controversies.

But today we are in an advantageous position to study these verses from an independent standpoint in the context of the general theme and temper of the Upaniṣads.

Universality is, as we have seen, the characteristic temper of this literature, and human fulfilment its running theme.

The loftiness of its thought proceeds from its synthesis of all experience and spans earth and heaven, man and God, time and eternity.

Its conception of religion is infinite, taking in every aspect of human life.

It did not itself work out all the implications of its vision; the Gītā, as we have noted earlier, did this a few centuries later;

but its all-embracing vision stood sponsor to every subsequent development and formulation of thought and action in the sphere of human fulfilment.

It is from the standpoint of this broad vision that these six verses have to be studied.

Such a study in its fullness is the Gītā which, as I said earlier, has the Īśā Upaniṣad for its inspiration.

The clarification of these six obscure verses will, therefore, become easier if we take the approach of the Gītā as our guide.

The first three of the six verses read thus:

Andham் tamah praviśanti ye'vidyām upāsate;

Tato bhūya iva te tamo ya u vidyāyām ratāḥ—

'They enter into blind darkness who worship avidyā; into still greater darkness, as it were, do they enter who delight in vidyā.'

Anyadevāhurvidyayā anyadāhuravidyayā;

Iti śuśruma dhīrāṇām ye nastad vicacakṣire—

'One result, they say, is obtained by vidyā, and another result, they say, is obtained by avidyā;

thus have we heard from the wise ones who explained it to us.'

Vidyāṁ cāvidyāṁ ca yastad vedobhayam் saha;

Avidyayā mrtyuṁ tīrtvā vidyayā amrtamaśnute—

'He who knows both vidyā and avidyā together, overcomes death through avidyā and experiences immortality by means of vidyā.'

The words avidyā and vidyā mean, literally, ignorance and knowledge respectively. Literally taken, the verses are confusing. When a man worships avidyā or ignorance, says the verse, he enters into blinding darkness. This is understandable. But how can he get into greater darkness if he worships vidyā, knowledge? The two words, therefore, cannot be taken in their literal sense. They have to be taken in a special technical sense. Because the next verse says that one result is obtained through vidyā and quite a different one by avidyā; and the third one concludes by saying that by resorting to vidyā and avidyā together, one achieves immortality through vidyā after overcoming death by means of avidyā.

Not only the words vidyā and avidyā, but also the words mrtyu (death) and amrtam (immortality) are used in a special technical sense. In several Upaniṣads the world of change, both in its unmanifested and manifested states, is designated mrtyu, death. Says the Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (I. ii. 1):

Naiveha kiñcanāgra āsīt, mrtyunaivedamāvrtamāsīt aśanāyayā; Aśanāyā hi mrtyuh—

'There was nothing whatsoever here in the beginning. It was covered only by Death which is Hunger (Hiraṇyagarhba or Becoming in its initial stage); for Hunger, verily, is death.'

As opposed to this, the changeless reality behind and beyond the world of change is designated amrta. Says the Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad again (II. iii. 1):

Dve vāva brahmaṇo rūpe, mūrtaṁ caivāmūrtaṁ ca, martyaṁ cāmrtam ca, sthitam ca yacca, sacca tyacca—

'Brahman (Reality), indeed has two aspects—with form and the formless, mortal and immortal, limited and unlimited, defined and undefined.'

The Self and the Not-Self

The universe of our experience, according to Vedānta, consists of the two categories of the not-Self and the Self. Yuṣmadasmadpratyayagocara, in the words of Saṅkara (Introduction to BrahmaSūtra Commentary). Vidyā or knowledge refers to the knowledge of the Self, the changeless reality, the amrtam, while avidyā or ignorance refers to the knowledge of the not-Self, the changeful universe, the mrtyam. The Self and the not-Self are not two,

but one. Ātmaivedaṁ sarvam—'The Self alone is all this', says the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (VII. xxv. 2).

Man is aware, since his birth, of only one of these categories, namely, the world of the not-Self. He plunges into this world, and handles it and gets handled by it, till death takes him away. He handles it in himself, in his daily life, in his education, in his science, and in his social pursuits. He builds up structures of knowledge, scientific and philosophical, to explain to himself its nature and mystery. This knowledge, under the best of circumstances, enables him to steer his life-bark in the ocean of existence with a measure of success, and leaves him, under the worst of circumstances, a wreck in its turbulent waters. In either case, whether in success or in failure, he remains baffled by its mystery and ignorant of its true nature. This is what is referred to in the first line of verse nine:

Andhaṁ tamaḥ praviśanti ye'vidyāṁ upāsate—

The knowledge of the not-Self which man had laboriously built up turns out in the end to be only a form of learned ignorance. It is only 'knowledge of structural form and not knowledge of content' as expressed in the quotation from Eddington given in my last lecture. It is only knowledge of passing shadows. Says Sir James Jeans (The New Background of Science, p. 68):

'Physical science set out to study a world of matter and radiation and finds that it cannot describe or picture the nature of either, even to itself. Photons, electrons, and protons have become as meaningless to the physicist as x, y, z are to a child on its first day of learning algebra. The most we hope for at the moment is to discover ways of manipulating x, y, z without knowing 'what they are, with the result that the advance of knowledge is at present reduced to what Einstein has described as extracting one incomprehensible from another incomprehensible.'

If this is the condition of advanced scientific knowledge, how much more true it must be with regard to ordinary human knowledge!

There are those who let go this world of change, of death, of the not-Self, in search of the Changeless, of the Beyond, of the world of the Self. This is also a legitimate field of search; and because of its being the arena of awareness, it is termed vidyā, knowledge, as opposed to the arena of matter or non-awareness,

which is therefore termed avidyā, ignorance. But this vidyā is also inadequate, apparently more inadequate, says the second line:

Tato bhūya iva te tamo ya u vidyāyām ratāḥ—

The word iva, meaning 'as it were', implies that it is not an unqualified condemnation of the pursuit of the beyond; neither is the pursuit of avidyā condemned for condemnation's sake by the first line; for the pursuit of the Self is the noblest of pursuits; the pursuit of the not-Self, of the world of change, is also a noble one; the tenth verse affirms this by stating that each leads to a distinct result; each has its reward; but that each by itself is incomplete and inadequate. The Upaniṣad knows that a richer harvest of spirituality can be gathered, a broader and richer character and personality can be achieved, by cultivating both the fields of experience, the fields of the Self and the not-Self, which, according to the vision of the Upanisads, are fundamentally one: Sarvam khalu idam brahma—'All this is verily Brahman' (Chāndogya Upaniṣad, III. xiv. 1). And so the eleventh verse says:

'He who knows both vidyā and avidyā together, overcomes death through avidyā and experiences immortality by means of vidyā.'

The study of the not-Self or the world of change is science; this study gives man knowledge of the laws that govern the world of change, and the capacity to control and manipulate it in the interest of his development, in the interest of a richer and fuller life for himself. But if this is done in isolation, if this is attempted without reference to his inner world, the world of the Self, the result will be not life and more life, but death and more death. Hence the exhortation to combine it with the knowledge of the Self, the changeless, deathless reality in man. It is this knowledge of the Self that imparts meaning and significance to man's knowledge of the not-Self. Says Saṅkarācārya:

Tadātmanā vinirmuktah jagat asatsampadyate—

Sri Ramakrishna compared the world of the not-Self to the zero. The zero has no value in itself; we may add zero after zero.

to make a figure, but it will have no value. But put the figure

1 behind them; suddenly they become significant; with every

additional zero, the figure grows in significance. Similarly, said

Sri Ramakrishna, our activities and processes in the world are but

a string of zeros by themselves. They are but 'full of sound and

fury' in the words of Shakespeare; and they end in smoke. But

when viewed against the background of the Ātman, they become

significant; they then cease to be fugitive entities and processes;

they become real and meaningful. The world thus is unreal in

itself; it is a projection of our ignorance, but it is real as the

Ātman. Says the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (I. vi. 1):

Trayam vā idam, nāma rūpam karma—

After stating this as the nature of the world of our everyday

experience, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad further states that this

world of name, form, and action is truth, it is not illusory, but

that the Ātman is the 'Truth of truth (II. i. 20):

Tasyopaniṣad, satyasya satyamiti; prāṇā vai satyam, teṣām eṣa satyam—

Being and Becoming

The Upaniṣad expounded its vision of the unity of experience,

with its message of perfection and life-fulfilment, in its ninth, tenth,

and eleventh verses. This was from the approach of the Self and

the not-Self. The same vision and message is now conveyed, in the

next three verses, from another approach—that of Brahman and

the Jagat (world of change), of Being and Becoming. Being and

Becoming are one; Becoming apart from Being is zero. Being

apart from Becoming tends to become remote and nullified.

And so the Iśā Upaniṣad again exhorts us in its twelfth, thirteenth,

and fourteenth verses to conduct our life in the light of the ever-

present unity of both. Says verse twelve:

Andham tamah praviśanti ye'saṁbhūtimupāsate;

Tato bhūya iva te tamo ya u saṁbhūtyām ratāḥ—

greater darkness, as it were, do they enter who delight in sambhūti

(pure Being or Brahman).’

The wòrship of the self-sufficient world is the way of material-

ism. This is the product of a shallow philosophy. It has its own

relevance; but if followed too consistently and too long, it will

lead only to darkness and sorrow.

The pursuit of pure Being, similarly, is fraught with dangerous

consequences. The ‘via negativa’, or the path of nivṛtti, as Vedānta

terms it, and the path of inaction which it involves, will land all

but the sturdiest of seekers on the shores not of Being, but of

non-Being, not of life fulfilment, but of life negation. Man has to

reckon with the pull of Becoming; it does not cease to exist and

act by being simply ignored.

Each of these paths yields a definite result; but it is limited

and uncertain, being based on limited and inadequate views of

reality. Says the thirteenth verse:

Anyadevāhuḥ sambhavād anyadāhur asambhavāt;

Iti śuśruma dhīrāṇāṁ ye nastad vicacakṣire—

‘One result is obtained by the path of Sambhava (pure Being),

and quite a different one by that of the Asambhava (Becoming).

Thus have we heard from the wise ones who taught it to us.’

And so the fourteenth verse concludes:

Sambhūtim̀ ca vināśam̀ ca yastad vedobhayam̀ saha;

Vināśena mṛtyum̀ tīrtvā sambhūtyā amṛtamaśnute—

‘He who knows sambhūti (Brahman) and vināśa (the perish-

able world of Becoming) both together, overcomes death through

vināśa, and achieves immortality through sambhūti.’

The word vināśa means destruction, here it means the destruc-

tible, that which is subject to destruction—the world of Becoming.

of name, form, and action. The entity denoted by the word vināśa,

occurring in this verse, refers to the same entity denoted by the

word asambhūti, occurring in verse twelve. This common re-

ference gives the clue to the meaning of the otherwise obscure word

asambhūti; its obscurity has baffled all commentators. It usually

conveys the meaning of non-manifestation; sambhūti is manifesta-

tion; a-sambhūti is non-manifestation. But in view of asambhūti

being equated with vināśa, sambhūti must mean that which is

a-vināśa, non-destruction, hence pure Being or Brahman. One of

the old commentators, Uvaṭācārya, has explained sambhūti in this

sense; he takes it to mean Brahman. Says Yājñavalkya, addressing

his wife Maitreyi (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, IV.v.14):

Avināśi vā are'yamātmā anucchittidharmā—

Says also the Gītā (II. 17):

Avināśi tu tadviddhi yena sarvam idaṁ tatam;

Vināśamavyayasyāsya na kaścit kartumarhati—

Every one of our old commentators has been compelled to give

arbitrary meanings to certain of the key-words in the above six

verses to make them intelligible. Yet, as I said earlier, they do

not seem to have done adequate justice to the thought of these

verses when viewed in the light of the general theme of this

great Upaniṣad, or of the Upaniṣads in general. In the ex-

position which I have ventured to give, the liberties taken

with the words are far less. And it fully fits in with the famous

proclamation in the opening verse of this Upaniṣad, a proclama-

tion which provided the fundamental theme of all Upaniṣadic

thought, namely, the divinity of man and nature, and the inherent

spirituality of life.

Worldliness and Other-Worldliness

These verses seek to resolve the opposition between our outer

life and our inner life, between the demand for action and the

call of contemplation. The end aimed at is perfection. The human

mind has the tendency to oscillate between extremes. The worldly

man, after drinking the world to its dregs, experiences ennui; he

then curses the world and becomes other-worldly. It is not philo-

sophy that is found as a guide in such cases, but the indisciplined

impulses and moods of man. He could as well have used his life in

the world to pursue truth and life excellence; but he then had cursed

other-worldliness and the inner life; and now he proceeds to curse

worldliness. In such a context, God and the world will be always

at loggerheads. Says Swami Vivekananda in his lecture on the

theme of the Īśā Upaniṣad, delivered in London in 1896 ('God in

Everything', Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, p. 150):

'If a man plunges headlong into foolish luxuries of the world

without knowing the truth, he has missed his footing, he cannot

reach the goal. And if a man curses the world, goes into a forest,

mortifies his flesh, and kills himself little by little, by starvation,

makes his heart a 'barren waste, kills out all feeling, and becomes

harsh, stern, and áried up, that man also has missed the way. These

are the two extremes, the two mistakes at either end. Both have

lost the way, both have missed the goal.'

And referring to the corrective applied by this Upaniṣad, he

continues (ibid.):

'So work, says Vedānta, putting God in everything, and

knowing Him to be in everything. Work incessantly, holding life

as something deified, as God Himself.... God is in everything,

where else shall we go to find Him? He is already in every work,

in every thought, in every feeling. Thus knowing, we must work,

this is the only way, there is no other.... We have seen how false

desires are the cause of all the misery and evil we suffer, but when

they are thus deified, purified, through God, they bring no evil,

they bring no misery. Those who have not learnt this secret will

have to live in a demoniacal world until they discover it. Many

do not know what an infinite mine of bliss is in them, around them,

everywhere; they have not yet discovered it. What is a demonia-

cal world? Vedānta says, Ignorance.'

Samyagjñāna or The Philosophy of Total Vision

Vidyā and avidya, the Self and the not-Self, as well as sam-

bhūti and asambhūti, Brahman and the world, are basically one,

not two. Avidyā affirms the world as a self-sufficient reality.

Vidyā affirms God as the Other, as a far away reality. When true

knowledge arises, says this Upaniṣad, this opposition is overcome.

This true knowledge involves comprehension of the total Rea-

lity, of the truth of both Being and Becoming. Philosophic knowl-

edge or vision cannot be complete if it ignores or neglects any

aspect of knowledge or experience. Philosophy is the synthesis of

all knowledge and experience, according to the Upaniṣads and ac-

cording also to modern thought. Brahmavidyā, philosophy, is sar-

vavidyāpratiṣṭhā, the basis and support of all knowledge, says the

Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (I. i. 1). All knowledge, according to that

Upaniṣad, can be divided into two distinct categories—the aparā,

the lower, and the parā, the higher. It boldly relegates all

sciences, arts, theologies, and even the holy scriptures of religions,

including the Vedas, to the aparā category. And that is parā, it

says, yayā tadaksaram adhigamyate—‘by which the imperishable

Reality is realized.’ (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, I.i.5). The vision of

the Totality therefore must include the vision of the parā and aparā

aspects of Reality. If brahmavidyā, philosophy, is the pratisthā,

support, of sarvavidyā, totality of knowledge, it must be a synthesis

of both the aparā and the parā forms of knowledge.

This is endorsed by the Gītā in its statement that jñāna, philo-

sophy, is the synthesis of the knowledge of the not-Self and the

Self (XIII.2):

Kṣetrakṣetrajñayor jñānaṁ yat tat jñānam் matam் mama.

'Philosophy is the interpretation of knowledge through the

synthesis of all the sciences', says Durant Drake.

'Philosophy is the survey of all the sciences with the special

object of their harmony and of their completion. It brings to this

task not only the evidence of the separate sciences but also its own

special appeal to concrete experience', says A.N. Whitehead.

'The object of philosophy is to take over the results of the

various sciences, to add to them the results of the various religious

and ethical experiences of mankind, and then to reflect upon the

whole', says C.D. Broad.

'Philosophy is the comprehensive sum total of all true knowl-

edge. The sciences do not exist outside and by the side of it; they

are parts of it', says Paulsen.

'Philosophy takes all knowledge for its province', says Bacon.

The synthesis of the knowledge of the not-Self, avidyā, which

is positive science, with that of the Self, vidyā, which is the science

of religion, will give us true philosophy, which is knowledge flow-

ering into vision and maturing into wisdom.

This is pūrṇajñāna, fullness of knowledge, according to Ved-

ānta. It is vijñāna, comprehensive knowledge, as termed by Sri

Ramakrishna. The Gītā (IX. 1) speaks of this as jñānam் vijñāna-

sahitam—‘jñāna coupled with vijñāna', and proclaims this as the

summit of spiritual achievement (VII.19):

ĪŚA UPANIṢAD-4

Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate;

Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhāk—

'At the end of many births, the wise man attains Me with the realization that all this (universe) is Vāsudeva (the indwelling Self); such a great-souled one is rare to come across.'

The Nitya and the Līlā

The Ātman or Brahman is the changeless Reality; It is termed Nitya, the Eternal, in Vedānta. The relative world when viewed in the light of this Nitya is termed Līlā, God's cosmic play. And we then get the equation: the Nitya and the Līlā are one. It is also expressed in another way: Brahman and Śakti, Being and Its power of Becoming, are one. Some of the most profound utterances of Sri Ramakrishna have this for their theme (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, New York Edition, 1942, p. 257):

'A man should reach the Nitya, the Absolute, by following the trail of the Līlā, the Relative. It is like reaching the roof by the stairs. After realizing the Absolute, he should climb down to the Relative and live on that plane in the company of devotees, charging his mind with the love of God. This is my final and most mature opinion.'

Again (ibid., pp. 477-78):

'If you accept the Nitya, you must also accept the Līlā. It is the process of negation and affirmation. You realize the Nitya by negating the Līlā. Then you affirm the Līlā, seeing in it the manifestation of the Nitya. One attains this state after realizing Reality in both aspects: Personal and Impersonal. The Personal is the embodiment of Cit, Consciousness; and the Impersonal is the indivisible Saccidānanda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss.

'Brahman alone has become everything. Therefore to the vijñānī this world is a "mansion of mirth." But to the jñānī it is a framework of illusion.'

This is the profound vision that is expressed in the opening Peace chant of this Upaniṣad which we studied in the second discourse:

'That is the Full; This is the Full. From the Full has come the Full. The Full remains the Full, even after the Full has come out of the Full.'

144

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Perfection Here and Now

The vision of the unity of the One and the many has tremendous consequences for the life and thought and work of man. It alone ensures man's all-sided growth, makes for the development of his head and heart side by side, and assures the attainment of perfection here and now. It unifies the paths of Jñāna, knowledge, Karma, work, and Bhakti, love, and makes for a perfect character. The Gītā proclaims this message as its central theme; it finds a unique expression in verse eighteen of its fourth chapter:

Karmanyakarma yaḥ paśyet akarmani ca karma yaḥ; Sa buddhimān manuṣyeṣu sa yuktaḥ kṛtsnakarmakṛt—

'He who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, he is wise among men, he is a yogi, and a doer of all action.'

The story of Sri Ramakrishna's imparting of this total vision of God to his beloved young disciple Naren, as Vivekananda was known in his pre-monastic life, is a fascinating episode. The Master had been educating his disciple in this total vision ever since they first met four years before. Naren had already realized the philosophical significance of Sakti or the personal aspect of God, as inseparable from Brahman, the impersonal Absolute. The episode registering this growth in Naren's comprehension had taken place two years earlier, and the Master had been highly pleased then.

The Master was suffering from the fatal disease of throat cancer; hardly a few months of earthly life remained for him. The intense suffering on the plane of the body was matched by an unparalleled intensity of divine moods and unceasing spiritual ministrations to disciples and devotees. Young Naren was consumed with the longing for the vision of God. Quoting a letter from Swami Sivananda, a fellow disciple of Vivekananda, dated 7 December 1927, Romain Rolland writes about this memorable episode thus (Life of Ramakrishna, Fourth Impression, p. 268):

'One day, Swami Sivananda told me, he was present in the garden of Cossipore, near Calcutta, when Naren really attained this state. "Seeing him unconscious, his body as cold as that of a corpse, we ran in great agitation to the Master and told him what had happened. The Master showed no anxiety; he merely smiled and said: 'Very well!' and then relapsed into silence. Naren returned to outward consciousness and came to the Master. 'The Master said to him: 'Well, now do you understand? This (the highest

realization) will henceforth remain under lock and key. You have the Mother's work to do. When it is finished, She will undo the lock.' Naren replied: 'Master, I was happy in samādhi. In my infinite joy, I had forgotten the world. I beseech you to let me remain in that state!' 'For shame!' cried the Master. 'How can you ask such things? I thought you were a vast receptacle of life, and here you wish to stay absorbed in personal joy like an ordinary man! ...This realization will become so natural to you, by the grace of the Mother, that in your normal state you will realize the one Divinity in all beings; you will do great things in the world; you will bring spiritual consciousness to men, and assuage the misery of the humble and the poor'

After the passing away of his Master, Vivekananda proclaimed the message of this total vision, with its practical implications, in both East and West. He developed out of it a dynamic and broad spirituality comprehensive of every facet of life and activity. In her 'Introduction' to The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, the English disciple of Vivekananda, brings out in a powerful utterance 'the practical implications of her Master's philosophy. After referring to his all-inclusive Advaitic vision, she continues:

'It is this which adds its crowning significance to our Master's life, for here it becomes the meeting-point, not only of East and West, but also of past and future. If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.'

This brief paragraph can well stand as a fine exposition of the meaning and implications of these six verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad, nay of the Īśā Upaniṣad as a whole.

SIX

ĪŚĀ UPANIṢAD–5

When discussing verses nine to fourteen of the Īśā Upaniṣad which expound a philosophy of pūrṇajñāna, total Vision, leading to the unity of mysticism and action, I pointed out that, keeping in view the Weltanschauung or world-view of this Upaniṣad, the Bhagavad-Gītā had later developed a complete philosophy of life and action in which the demands of outward action were reconciled with those of inward contemplation. The Upaniṣad told us that to concentrate our attention only on the external world, and endeavour to find our way in this world of the not-Self, and neglect the inner world of the Ātman in the process, was to ‘enter into blinding darkness’; but that, on the other hand, to neglect this world which we see and touch and handle. and become involved only in a mystical world within, was to ‘enter into still greater darkness, as it were’. What is needed, says the Upaniṣad, is to understand that Reality is one, untouched by limitations such as of outer and inner, of the not-Self and the Self, of the many and the One, and to conduct our life in the light of this all-embracing knowledge.

This knowledge will help us to overcome death by intelligent handling of this world of death, death that acts upon us continually in the form of time, and achieve immortality through the knowledge of ourselves as the eternal and ever-present Ātman.

Strength Through Education

With the strength arising from this total vision, we achieve total life-efficiency–efficiency in external life and action as well as efficiency in internal thought and contemplation. When a man delights in his inner life, in the world ‘beyond’, says the Upaniṣad, neglecting the environment of the outer world in which his life is cast, he will ‘enter into still greater darkness, as it were’.

The history of India in recent centuries well illustrates the truth of this statement. We became other-worldly in our attitudes, the whole country was seized with several types of what Vivekananda termed ‘weakening mysticisms’, and totally neglected the

virtues and graces of life in society. Totally overlooked was the need to educate the nation in political vision and social efficiency. There was an over-emphasis on negative virtues and on individual salvation. The food meant only for vigorous natures became poison for the multitudes. In course of time, the entire body-politic became weakened and eventually succumbed to foreign invasions. And for a few centuries the whole country lay prostrate in political subjection and cultural stagnation.

Summing up the lessons of India's political history, Will Durant writes in the section on India in Our Oriental Heritage (The Story of Civilization, Part I. p. 463):

'Weakened by division, it succumbed to invaders; impoverished by invaders, it lost all power of resistance, and took refuge in super-natural consolations; it argued that both mastery and slavery were superficial delusions, and concluded that freedom of the body or the nation was hardly worth defending in so brief a life. The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization.'

This is clear vindication of the truth of the Upaniṣadic remark that if avidyā, worldliness, leads to deep darkness, vidyā, other-worldliness, may lead to still deeper darkness. The world does not cease to exist merely by shutting our eyes to it. Negation of worldliness is quite different from negation of the world. The latter is the way of exclusively mystical other-worldly religions; and it leads to weakness and death. The former is the way of true philosophy; and it leads to life and more life and to total fulfilment in the end. This is the message conveyed by this Upaniṣad and by the Gītā.

Renunciation is the key-note in the mystical other-worldly religions as well as in the religion of the Īśā Upaniṣad and the Gītā. In the former, it is negative and weakening for all but the purest and stoutest hearts, while in the latter, it is an educational process, positive and strengthening, leading to the manifestation of the divine within, and to the broadening and deepening of character.

Analyzing this weakening of India's body-politic through long neglect of what the Upaniṣad terms the avidyā aspect of Reality, Swami Vivekananda writes (Letters, Complete Works, Vol. V, p. 48):

'The present Hindu society is organized only for spiritual men, and hopelessly crushes out everybody else. Why? Where should

they go who want to enjoy the world a little with its frivolities?

Just as our religion takes in all, so should our society. This is to

be worked out by first understanding the true principles of our

religion, and then applying them to society. This is the slow but

sure work to be done.'

In the course of a conversation on the same theme with Sister

Nivedita, Vivekananda remarked (Nivedita: The Master As I Saw

Him, p. 203):

'Hitherto the great fault of our Indian religion has lain in its

knowing only two words—renunciation and mukti (spiritual eman-

cipation). Only mukti here! Nothing for the householder!

'But these are the very people whom I want to help. For

are not all souls of the same quality? Is not the goal of all the

same?

'And so strength must come to the nation through education.'

In a previous lecture I had quoted the following stirring words

of Sister Nivedita in her 'Introduction' to The Complete Works of

Swami Vivekananda which bears reproduction in this context:

'If the many, and the One be indeed the same Reality, then

it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work,

all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of

realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and

secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life

is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to

quit and to avoid.'

Work Is Worship

This is the corollary of the philosophy of total vision. Work is

worship. Inner and outer, the Self and the not-Self, are distinc-

tions helpful in the analysis and study of experience, provided

they are understood as provisional. In the final estimate they have

to be transcended. 'Reality is undivided in things apparently

divided', says the Gītā (XIII. 16):

Avibhaktam ca bhūteṣu vibhaktamiva ca sthitam.

The Mahānārāyaṇa Upaniṣad says (XIII. 5):

Antah bahiśca tat sarvam vyāpya nārāyanah sthitah—

'Nārāyaṇa (the indwelling Divine), exists pervading all things,

externally as well as internally.'

We have already seen the proclamation of the Īśā Upaniṣad,

in its very opening verse, that the divine Reality envelopes every-

thing in this changing universe:

Īśāvāsyam idam sarvam yatkiñca jagatyām jagat.

Na karmanām anārambhāt naiṣkarmyam puruṣośnute;

Na ca sannyasanādeva siddhim samadhigacchati—

Work in the world is a school of spiritual education for man. If work is performed merely for worldly gain, it piles up only bondages for him. On the other hand, the pursuit of vidyā, the pursuit of the knowledge of the Self, becomes the pursuit of the ego and therefore of denser darkness, when it is not backed by purity and strength of character arising from disciplined action in the world of avidya. A view similar to this of the Upaniṣad is also expressed by Swami Vivekananda in a moving passage in his lecture on 'Vedānta in Its Application to Indian Life' (Complete Works, Vol. III, Eighth Edition, p. 247):

'Bring all light into the world; light, bring light! Let light come unto every one; the task will not be finished till every one has reached the Lord. Bring light to the poor, and bring more light to the rich, for they require it more than the poor; bring light to the ignorant, and more light to the educated, for the vanities of the education of our time are tremendous! Thus bring light to all and leave the rest unto the Lord.'

Vivekananda speaks of the need to bring more light to the educated because education today makes for vanity and the fattening of the ego, and not for illumination of the heart. If the uneducated are in need of light, the educated are in more need of it. This is in tune with the language and sentiment of the Īśā Upaniṣad. If we lose our way in the world of action, it is a matter of pity. But if, in the name of contemplation, we become self-centred and callous, it is a matter of greater pity, as it involves the loss of

both the not-Self and the Self; we fail to achieve character as well

as vision. The Gītā teaches that true spirituality confers on man

all-round efficiency—efficiency in the field of action, and efficiency

in the field of thought and contemplation. This total efficiency

is the product of a total vision of Reality. This teaching the Gītā

derived from the Upaniṣads and developed into the science and

art of a comprehensive spirituality—brahmavidyāntaraṇa yoga-

śāstra.

Dharma and Amrta

When man's life and action in the world are lit up by even a

hazy awareness of the ever-present light of the Ātman, the one

Self in all, he achieves social ethics, resulting in character effici-

ency in the individual and general welfare in society. This is the

achievement of true manliness by man, the highest measure of his

social personality. This is the concept of man in ancient Greek and

modern western thought. But the world in which he is involved

and of which he is a part is a world of change, of death. Something

in him craves for the vision of the Eternal, of the Deathless, the

intimations of which he has occasionally received even in his strug-

gles in the world of change and death. This craving and its satis-

faction is the true meaning of religion; it is man's reaching out to

the Eternal and the Holy, and the realization by him of deathless-

ness, immortality.

This is the concept of man, of the height of human excellence,

in all mystical faiths which expound some message of salvation.

Such salvation is other-worldly and to be experienced only after

death. The Upaniṣads and the Gītā term the former achievement

dharma and the latter amrta; they are the products respectively

of pravritti, action, or rather, out-going action, and of nivritti, in-

action, or rather inward-directed action. The first gives abhyudaya,

social welfare, through the efficient control and manipulation of the

physical, politico-economic, and social environment of the indi-

vidual, while the second ensures nihśreyasa, spiritual freedom,

through an equally efficient control and manipulation of the world

of the inner life.

These two are represented in the modern world by the positi-

vistic or secular, and by the transcendental or religious attitudes,

outlooks, and programmes respectively. These two have been in

a relation of perpetual conflict with each other in almost every field

of human endeavour, exposing thus their individual inadequacy arising from a partial view of Reality. The Iśā Upaniṣad refers to this inadequacy in their outlooks, methods, and results in verses nine to fourteen, as we have already seen. He goes into deep dark-

ness who worships avidyā, Reality as conceived by secular and positivistic thought. Into still greater darkness, as it were, does he enter who delights in vidyā, Reality as other-worldly and transcendent, as conceived in religious thought. Each has its distinct reward which, by itself, does not lead to total life-fulfilment, said the Upaniṣad and proceeded, in verses eleven and fourteen, to expound its own message of complete life-fulfilment flowing from the total vision of Reality enunciated in its 'Peace' invocation and in its opening verse.

Vedānta, as the philosophy and religion of the Upaniṣads is known, enshrines this total vision and upholds this comprehensive spirituality. In virtue of this, it has received the name of Sanātana Dharma, Eternal Religion, or Perennial Philosophy as Aldous Huxley has translated it. The Sanātana Dharma in its wholeness is a synthesis of what the Īśā Upaniṣad calls vidyā and avidyā. That this is its unique feature is clearly expressed by Śaṅkarācārya in the very opening paragraph of his beautiful commentary on the Gītā:

Dvividho hi vedokto dharmah, pravṛttilakṣaṇo nivṛttilak-

ṣaṇaśca jagataḥ sthitikaraṇam, prāṇinām sākṣād abhyudayaniḥśre-

yasahetuḥ—

'Twofold, verily, is the dharma as taught by the Vedas, one characterized by pravṛtti, action (or, rather, out-going action), and the other characterized by nivṛtti, inaction (or, rather, inward-directed action), both together constituting the stabilizing factor of the world, and the true cause of the abhyudaya (worldly welfare) and niḥśreyasa (spiritual freedom) of all beings.'

This comprehensiveness is the special quality of the message which the world gets from what Sanātana Dharma calls its pūrṇa avatāras, full incarnations of God, among whom Kṛṣṇa stands as the foremost. Says the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (I. iii. 28):

Ete cāṁśakalāḥ puṁsaḥ

kṛṣṇastu bhagavān svayam—

'Other incarnations were but parts of the Lord, but He, Kṛṣṇa, was the Lord Himself.'

His message is both dharmya and amrta, capable of ensuring collective social welfare and the realization by the individual of his immortal divine nature, as defined by Himself in the Gītā (XII. 20).

This is also the description that Swami Vivekananda gives of the scope of the mission of his Master, Sri Ramakrishna:

Ātmano mokṣārtham jagaddhitāya ca—

Krṣṇa refers to his teaching as jñāna, philosophy in the true sense of the term, where all knowledge is unified in wisdom. And this wisdom is realizable not in a post-mortem existence but in life itself, by understanding and accepting life as an educational process for the manifestation of the Divine within (Gītā: IX. 2):

Rājavidyā rājaguhyam pavitram idam uttamam;

Pratyakṣāvagamam dharmyam susukham kartum avyayam—

The Synthesis of Character and Vision

The philosophy of total vision thus synthesizes action and contemplation, the secular and the sacred, reason and faith, the human and the divine. The Gītā sings the glory of this sweeping vision and its blessing for man in its last verse (XVIII. 78):

Yatra yogeśvaraḥ krṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanurdharaḥ;

Tatra śrīvijayobhūtirdhruvā nītirmatirmama—

Krṣṇa, the master of yoga, represents the height of spiritual vision, the master of the vidyā of the Īśā Upaniṣad. Arjuna, the wielder of the bow, represents the man of action and endeavour,

the master of the avidyā of the Īśā Upaniṣad, the intensely practical man. When these two spiritual forces combine in a character or in a society, when lofty vision combines with intense practicality—vidyām cāvidyām ca yastad vedobhayam saha, as the Īśā Upaniṣad puts it—there, in that character, in that society, says the Gītā, there shall be the full manifestation of śrī, fortune, vijaya, victory, bhūti, general welfare, and dhruvā nīti, unwavering justice and morality.

Śrī, wealth, is the product of intelligent labour; it comes from the efficient yoking of knowledge to productive enterprise; and it does not come by any other means, magical or mystical. Pure science is knowledge, lucifera; when it flows into the applied field of invention and discovery and develops technological efficiency, it becomes wealth and power, fructifera. This is the only source of material wealth for man, and of his freedom from want and fear in the external world. But freedom from want and fear in the external field of life does not constitute the totality of his welfare. Disintegration, or want of integration, in his inner life will turn his external successes into defeats. Hence to make his śrī, wealth, flow into true vijaya, victory, he must take the help of the science and technique of religion in order to obtain knowledge and mastery of his inner environment; thus only can he achieve total victory over want and fear. This is the true welfare of man, paramaśreyah. And a society of such men and women will be a society where justice and moral elevation, dhruvā nīti, will reign supreme and steady. That is the testament of the Gītā.

Man needs the combination, in his character, of yoga, or the transcendental vision of Kṛṣṇa, and the Promethean fire of Arjuna. In the Mahābhārata war, Kṛṣṇa did not do any fighting; he was only the unarmed charioteer of Arjuna. Arjuna was the fighter, the man of action, in the battle-field. But that action of Arjuna had the strength of Kṛṣṇa's vision behind it. That made it not the blind, self-cancelling, inefficient action of the ego, but the steady, purposeful, and efficient action of the illumined mind, of the buddhi. Action becomes a snare and a defeat for man when it does not draw nourishment from his true Self, which is the Self of all. Action illumined by the knowledge of the Self becomes itself illumination, and ceases to be mere action. Work becomes worship. All true action finds its consummation in illumination, says the Gītā (IV. 33). This combination of vision and action is what the

154

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Gītā teaches, through which man achieves a double efficiency, namely, practical efficiency by which he becomes a productive unit of society and enhances its life and welfare, and spiritual, inward, efficiency by which he achieves the awareness of his immortal divine nature: ‘Avidyayā mrtyuṁ īrtvā vidyayā amṛtam aśnute, as the eleventh verse of the Iśā Upaniṣad told us.

This is the message which our country, nay, the whole world, needs very urgently today. These beautiful verses of the Iśā Upaniṣad, though writfen ages ago, breathe the spirit of the universal and human, and bring to us the message of a comprehensive spirituality capable of energizing and illumining every aspect of human life, every field of human endeavour. They summon us to a converging life-endeavour to develop an all-sided character, broad as the skies and deep as the ocean. One-sidedness in character and interests has been the bane of our country; it has, in fact, been the bane of the whole world. One developed his emotions, another developed his intellect, and a third his practical bent. Each left a vast segment of the field of his life uncultivated, allowed it to lie fallow, and thus reaped only a marginal character-harvest. The Upaniṣads and the Gītā hold out to man today the spiritual message and its technical know-how for an intensive and extensive cultivation of his life, by which he may achieve the total enrichment of his character and personality.

Sri Ramakrishna did not like one-sidedness in people. He appreciated very much the all-sidedness of his young disciple, Narendra (Swami Vivekananda) and held him up as an example before his other disciples. This is the meaning of true education in which science and religion complement each other. It is ‘the manifestation of the perfection already in man’, as Swami Vivekananda defined it. It is to this perfection that spiritual teachers invite us. ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect’, says Jesus Christ (Matthew v. 48).

Prayer for Divine Revelation

The concluding four verses of the Iśā Upaniṣad, verses fifteen to eighteen, to which we now turn, give us a glimpse into the mind of a spiritual seeker of the Vedic age who is nearing the end of his life. He has lived a life of goodness; he has striven hard to realize the truth; he has struggled earnestly to develop his spiritual awareness; now the time has come for him to quit his

body, to quit his psycho-physical organism which had served him as a good instrument for the realization of truth. It has now become worn out and jaded, and unfit for life's purposes, whether for the pursuit of pleasure or for the pursuit of truth and wisdom. He is expecting its dissolution any moment.

What is the frame of mind of such a seeker? What is the nature and scope of the thoughts that fill his mind at that critical time? How does a spiritual seeker, who has striven earnestly and advanced in the spiritual path, but who has not yet realized the highest truth of the fullness of being as expounded in the previous verses, face death? We get an answer to these questions from these four verses.

He thinks within himself: I have not achieved perfection, the fullness of being; I have not achieved the realization of the Ātman, my true Self, which is the Self of all, and the state of jīvanmukti, liberation in life, which such realization involves. But I have led a good life, a moral life; and I have meditated earnestly on the mystery of truth and existence; I have tried to achieve awareness of my spiritual nature and its kinship with the World-Spirit, and through it, with all that exists.

He now addresses, in verses fifteen and sixteen, that World Spirit symbolized externally by the sun:

Hiraṇmayena pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham; Tat tvaṁ pūṣan apāvrṇu satyadharmāya dṛṣṭaye—

Pūṣannekarṣe yamasūryaprājāpatya vyūha raśmīn samūha; Tejo yat te rūpaṁ kalyāṇatamaṁ tat te pabyāmi; yo'sāvasau puruṣaḥ so'hamasmi—

So that I may see that which is

Thy most auspicious effulgence.

The Person that is in Thee, That am I.'

The ancient Vedic thinkers of India recognized the sun as the mother of all energy in the solar system. He is pūṣan, the nourisher, and yama, the controller and regulator of all the events and processes of the solar system—physical, organic, and even mental. This is echoed in the conclusions of modern science on the subject. Says Thomas R. Henry in his article on 'The Smitsonian Institution' (The National Geographic Magazine, September 1948):

'The sun is the great mother. All life on earth might be considered as transient materialization of the exhaustless floods of radiance which she pours on the planet's surface. This enables green plants to synthesize sugars and starches from water in the soil and from carbondioxide gas in the atmosphere, thus making possible all other forms of life on earth by producing the essential foods. We eat sunshine in sugar, bread, and meat, burn sunshine of millions of years ago in coal and oil, wear sunshine in wool and cotton. Sunshine makes the wind and the rain, the summers and winters of years and of ages. Inextricably interwoven are the threads of life and light.'

Reality and Its Symbol

The Vedic thinkers concluded from this that if there is a God in the universe, it is the sun. What god or gods imagined by the mind of man can compare in glory and majesty with this all-nourishing and all-controlling and visible entity in the sky, the source of all light and life in this world? So they invoked the visible sun as God and worshipped it. The scientific mind of today, which finds no place in its scheme of things for any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions, will consider this conclusion of the Vedic thinkers highly sensible and practical. But to these Vedic thinkers, who were inspired by a passion for truth and an untiring spirit of free inquiry, and who never sought for a mere cosy belief on which finally to rest their tired minds and hearts, this was but a first step.

Further steps steadily followed which revealed subtler and subtler depths of the gross surface reality of man and nature, the reality of the invisible behind the visible. They developed more and more spiritual ideas about man which resulted in the formulation of their ideas of God in more and more spiritual terms. There

was an evolution of man and there was a corresponding evolution

of God; or, more correctly speaking, the evolution in their con-

ceptions of man resulted in a corresponding evolution in their con-

ceptions of God. They saw man as a spiritual principle of which

the body and mind are but temporary limitations; and from this

angle of vision, their God, the sun, also appeared to them as an

all-pervading spiritual principle of which the visible sun in the

sky was but a temporary limitation; it was but a symbol. As in

the case of the physical man and the physical sun, they discovered

an intimate kinship also between the spiritual principle in man

and the spiritual principle in the sun.

They then took the next great step when they recognized the

spiritual principle in the sun to be but an aspect of the supreme

spiritual principle in the cosmos. This is the famous Vedic concept

of Brahman, the spiritual Absolute, which is the origin, sustenance,

and dissolution of the whole universe. Says the Taittirīya Brāh-

mana (III. xii. 9:7):

Yena sūryastapati tejasa iddhab

Of this supreme spiritual principle, which is beyond man's

speech and thought and which yet is the illuminer of all his speech

and thought, they still treated the sun as the best symbol; but

only as a symbol. This is the vision that finds embodiment in the

greatest Vedic prayer, the Gāyatrī:

Om, bhū, bhuvah, suvah!

Tat saviturvarenyam

bhargo devasya dhīmahi;

Dhiyo yo nah pracodayāt—

This is the spiritual background of the sentiments of these

two verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad. The devotee had been engaged

in life-long worship of the sun as the symbol of the cosmic Person.

He has not been able to realize the thing symbolized and discard

the symbol; he has not yet been able to worship his God 'in spirit

and in truth'. He has now come to the end of his days in his phy-

sical body; only a few moments more are left. He now concen-

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trates his mind, lifts it up in prayer above the pains and aches of the dying body, and implores, in verse fifteen, the object of his life-long adoration to reveal His true form to him:

Hiraṇmayena pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham—

'The face of truth is hidden by a golden lid (the golden orb of the sun),' says he, and adds:

Tat tvam pūṣan apāvṛṇu satyadharmāya dṛṣṭaye—

'That attractive orb of Thine, O Sun, please remove, so that I may see Thy true form, I who am devoted to Truth.'

I am not satisfied with appearances, I am not interested in Thy golden orb. I know that there is a truth hidden behind that golden orb; there is the true sun, the cosmic spiritual Person, behind the visible sun, and I want to see Him and realize my kinship with Him, says the devotee. The expression 'golden orb' represents the attractive physical aspects of things. I have been seeing the perishable beauty of the external aspects of things, including that of 'the sun, all my life; I now want to see the imperishable beauty that lies in the depth of things. The external beauty of the sun is but a symbol of the spiritual beauty of its true form. Deign to reveal Thy true form to me, Thy cosmic spiritual form. I am a satyadharmā—'Truth and its quest is my dharma, my religion, my passion.'

Addressing the sun, he says again in verse 16:

Pūṣan, 'Nourisher'; ekarṣe, 'Thou lonely Courser of the sky'; the sun courses through the heavens alone, without a companion. Yama, 'the regulator of all'; it is the sun that regulates and controls all the activities and processes within the solar system; the most microcosmic and the most macrocosmic processes within the solar system are governed by the sun; sūrya, 'O Sun'; prajāpatya, 'the son of Prajāpati, the 'Father of all'; vyūha raśmīn, 'remove Thy rays'; samūha, 'gather up' (Thy effulgence). Tejo yat te rūpaṁ kalyāṇatamaṁ tat te paśyāmi—I want to see that, and not this physical appearance of yours. The physical sun I have seen all my life. I want now to see what is the spiritual reality behind the physical sun.

In our daily life we see the physical realities of men and things around us; we hardly develop the capacity to go beyond the phys-

ical to the spiritual. In the world we cunstantly jostle against

each other physically, but rarely enter into each other, even ment- ally.

The more civilized a society the more is this physical jostling

and the less the capacity to enter into each other, to dig our

affections into each other. The famous Norwegian arctic explorer

Fridtjof Nansen referred to modern cities in our civilization as

places 'where men incessantly rub against each other until they

become round smooth ciphers'. Philosophy tells us that man is

not exhausted in his visible physical form and dimension, that he

has an interior depth to him, invisible and yet more real than the

former. If our physical existence fails to lead to an awareness

of this interior depth in ourselves and in everything else in nature,

then that existence is infructuous.

The seeker, therefore, seeks to probe into the truth behind the

sun and behind himself. He feels that the effulgence of the fam-

iliar sun is nothing compared to the effulgence of the spiritual

reality that lies hidden in its depths. If the external effulgence

is kāryāṇa, auspicious, the inner effulgence is kāryaṇatama, 'most

auspicious'. We are naturally charmed by the body of a person,

its youth and beauty; the visible and the tangible rivet our attention

and interest. But when our vision becomes penetrating, a new

dimension of the person's beauty reveals itself, more attractive

and elevating than the physical aspects. But few have the time

or the capacity to penetrate the body and go into the soul of things.

This seeker wants to go into the soul of things, the cosmic Reality

of which the sun is but a symbol, and which is the origin, sus- tenance, and final resting place of the whole universe.

He prays

from the bottom of his heart that the deity may graciously reveal

to him his true and most auspicious form—kalyāṇatamaṁ rūpam.

Kiñca ahaṁ na tu tvāṁ bhrtyavad yūce—'Moreover, I do not

beg of you like a servant', comments Saṅkara on this passage; for

the devotee, recognizing his spiritual kinship with the deity, ex- claims in a state of exaltation: Yo'sāvasau puruṣaḥ so'hamasmi—

'The Person who is in the sun, I am He.' The spiritual reality in

the sun is also the spiritual reality in me; we are spiritually one.

There is really no difference; the body alone makes the difference.

The sun is a big shining body, I am but a small clod of earth;

but behind both is the immortal divine Self. This knowledge of

the essential spiritual oneness of the whole universe, cosmic, celes- tial, as well as terrestrial, this knowledge is emphasized again and

again in the Upaniṣads. The difference in size or quantity or even function does not involve difference in the basic reality. The universe is all differences on the surface, but unity at the depths.

The Ātman is the reality behind all beings, big and small. A big wave and a small bubble of water have their basic oneness in the ocean. In this way Vedānta asks us to see the One behind the many. The devotee is not frightened simply because the sun

is big in size and he is small. His knowledge tells him, his penetrating vision assures him, that behind the big and the small there is a common unity of spiritual nature. As Śaṅkarācārya expresses it in his Vivekacūdāmaṇi (verse 244):

Rājyam் narendrasya bhaṭasya kheṭakaḥ Tayorapohe na bhaṭo na rājā—

'One man with the upādhi, or limiting adjunct, of rulership is called a king; another man with the upādhi of the dress and function of the lowest military rank is called a soldier. But when the particular upādhi of each is taken away there will remain neither king nor soldier, (but only man).'

In the language of political democracy, citizenship is the common bond uniting all members of a democratic state. Whatever high or low functions the members may be discharging, they have an inalienable common stature in their citizenship status. Taking the example of our Indian state today, Dr. Rajendra Prasad was the President of India. But when he ceased to be President he was just one of the millions of citizens of India. When he shed his temporary upādhi as the President of India, he resumed his normal personality, in the democratic context, as a citizen of India, a citizen among millions of such citizens. He resumed his inalienable political stature and status after shedding his temporary functional stature and status. Similarly, the upādhi of one individual makes him a tiny individual, the upādhi of another individual makes him a big individual, but when the upādhis are taken away, both become one in their common citizenship and in their common humanity. These upādhis are temporary limitations; they come and go. The Upaniṣads have also visualized man as without any of the upādhis. This is the Self of man, the pure and perfect, the birthless and deathless Reality, in which we are all one. So'ham asmi—I am He—is the Vedāntic equation, leading to the highest equation of all: Aham brahmāsmi—I am Brahman (the All).

ĪŚA UPANIṢAD–5

161

Facing Death in a Grand Manner

This devotee in the Īśā Upaniṣad realizes this with respect to the deity of his choice. He is getting weaker and weaker now, but only physically; his mind is firm and steady, and he is facing death in a grand manner, with the full knowledge of the process of death. Addressing himself in verse seventeen, he now says:

Vāyur anilam amrtam athedaṁ bhasmāntatīṁ śarīram;

Om krato smarakrtaṁ smakrato smakṛtaṁ smara—

Prāṇa (the cosmic energy); then this (mortal) body shall be reduced to ashes. Om! O mind! Remember; your (good) deeds, remember. O mind! Remember; your (good) deeds, remember.'

The devotee now feels himself sinking into death; the vital energy that had been coursing through his body all these years, by means of which he had worked hard, achieved wealth, experienced the burdens and delights of social existence, and worshipped God, that energy is fast ebbing away, to merge in the sum total of the cosmic energy outside, and to spell death to his individual physical existence. The energy that was captured in his physical configuration at birth; that moved his Jungs through the breathing apparatus and made of it a fly-wheel of the complicated bodily mechanism; the energy that had been temporarily trapped in his body all these years, and had imparted to him the attribute of being alive—that energy, vāyu or prāṇa, is now going to rejoin the immortal ocean of energy outside. Then what happens to this body? It becomes lifeless; it dies; it becomes divested of the attribute of life. The body was alive by virtue of the assemblage of several physical factors in an organic unity under the auspices of this energy. With the departure of this energy, the different physical factors cease to have organic unity, and they become just an assemblage ready to decompose and go back to their original forms.

Elements united to form the body; it will now go back to the elements; and the sooner the better. That is an ancient Indian idea which led to the practice of cremation. The idea of preserving the body never arose in this country because it had discovered the scientific truth that the body is a combination of perishable elements and that the real man is non-material and, therefore, immortal; also that the concept of destruction meant not going into absolute nothingness, but only a change of form or expression.

M.U.—11

There is no absolute destruction of matter or energy according to Indian thought; also according to modern scientific thought. Destruction, according to Sāṁkhya and Vedānta, only means going back to the cause; and this pertains only to compound things. No destruction can affect that which is uncompounded, non-material, and simple. Such is the Ātman, the true Self of man, which, being of the nature of awareness, is always a singular. So the devotee says: Idaṁ śarīraṁ bhasmāntaṁ bhūyāt. This body, which is the product of a combination, and as such conditioned by time, which has been my servant all these years, its time has come; it has become jaded, worn out, unfit for further service. After the vital energy leaves it, let it be quickly decomposed into its constituent elements through the agency of fire. The chemistry of the body had brought these constituents into an organic unity. Death has now dismantled that chemical laboratory; let fire now hasten their resumption of their original forms.

The Buddha expressed similar sentiments with regard to his body before his death. After a long life of spiritual ministration extending to eighty years, he felt the effect of age on his once robust body. Addressing his beloved disciple, Ānanda, he said (Cf. J. G. Jennings: The Vedāntic Buddhism of the Buddha, p. 398):

'I indeed, Ānanda, am now worn out, old, of great age; I have gone my journey, completed my life; my life has lasted eighty years. As when a worn-out cart is made to go by patching up, even so by patching up methinks, Ānanda, the body of the tathāgata (Buddha) is made to go. At such time as the tathāgata, by withdrawing attention from all outward things, by the cessation of each sensation, attains and dwells in a self-transcendent state of mind (ceto-samādhim), then (only) is the body of the tathāgata at ease.'

The human body, according to Indian spiritual thought, is the best instrument nature has designed for the end purpose of evolution, namely, the manifestation of the indwelling divine Self. Having used his body for this high purpose throughout his life, and finding the body worn out and unfit for further use, the devotee in the Iśā Upaniṣad now says: 'Let the vital energy in me join the immortal cosmic energy from which it came and individualized itself as my psychophysical organism.' He then adds: 'Atha idaṁ śarīraṁ bhasmāntaṁ bhūyāt—then, let this body be reduced to ashes.' Then he addresses his mind and says with emphasis:

ĪŚA UPANIṢAD-5

Om krato smara; krtam smara; krato smara; krtam smara—

Death as a Creative Crisis

He admonishes his mind to dwell on positive thoughts, not negative ones, at the moment of death; to think of good, not evil, to think of virtue, not sin.

Religions enjoin on the devotee the need to think of God and to take His name at the time of death. For death is not the end of all existence, as held in secular thought, in which man is essentially a body. Religions, on the contrary, hold that it is the end only of this bodily existence. To Indian spiritual thought, it is also the beginning, under fortunate circumstances, of a steady march to spiritual awareness in a disembodied state, or, under normal circumstances, the beginning of another bodily existence to continue the evolutionary march of the soul on the road to complete spiritual awareness. This makes the moment of death a moment of creative crisis, from the point of view of religion. Hence it is the time to concentrate the mind on positive thoughts, on thoughts of virtue because, as expressed in the classical statement on the subject by the Gītā, the last thoughts of a person have much to do with the new life that he is to have after death (Gītā: VIII. 6-7):

Yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvam tyajatyante kalēbaram;

Tamevaiti kaunteya sadā tadbhāvabhāvitah—

Tasmāt sarvēṣu kālēṣu mām anusmara yudhya ca;

Mayyarpitamanobuddhiḥ māmevaiṣyasyasaṁśayah—

Vedic Eschatology of Devayāna and Pitṛyāna

Thus the thoughts of the last moment are of creative significance. The last thoughts, on their part, are determined by the thoughts of the lifetime, sāda tadbhāvabhāvitah—as the Gītā puts it. The devotee of the Īśā Upaniṣad is of this type; he is satya-

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dharmā, devoted to Truth, as he describes himself in verse fifteen.

He now admonishes his mind to dwell on the auspicious deeds he

has done during his long life. Such a step at this stage will keep

the mind of the devotee poised for the great spiritual adventure

ahead. This particular devotee seeks to avoid any further em-

bodiment. And so he prays to God, conceived as Agni, cosmic

divine energy, in the eighteenth and last verse of the Upaniṣad:

Agne naya supathā rāye asmān

viśvāni deva vayunāni vidvān;

Yuyodhyasmad juhurāṇam eno

bhūyiṣṭhām te nama uktim vidhema—

'O Agni, lead us by the good path that we may (enjoy) the

wealth (the fruits of the good deeds we have done). Thou knowest

all our deeds. Lord, destroy the deceitful sin in us. We salute

Thee with our words again and again.'

In our ancient Vedic literature, we find mention of two paths

taken by the soul after death. One is called dhūmādi mārga, the

path beginning with smoke and associated with darkness; and the

other is called arcirādi mārga, the path beginning with flame and

associated with light. These paths are also termed pitṛyāṇa, the

path of the manes, and devayāna, the path of the gods, respectively.

The first path is for those who have lived the ordinary life moti-

vated by self-interest, without seeking any transcendental spiritual

value. This path is also associated with the dakṣiṇāyana, the

southern path of the sun. Those who have lived a good life, on

the other hand, and also sought higher spiritual values through

meditation, go by the second path, the devayāna, which is asso-

ciated with uttarāyaṇa, the northern movement of the sun. Now

it is difficult to understand what exactly is meant by the eschat-

ology of these two paths. We have a detailed description of the

two paths in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (Chapter V). The Gītā also

treats of them in verses twenty-three to twenty-five of its eighth

chapter and concludes its treatment in verse twenty-six thus:

Śuklakṛṣṇe gatī hyete jagataḥ śāśvate mate;

Ekayā yātyanāvṛttim anyayāvartate punaḥ—

'These two—the white and the dark—are known as the world's

eternal paths; one leads to cessation from rebirth; the other leads

to rebirth again.'

IŚĀ UPANIṢAD–5

165

In the Mahābhārata we have the instance of Bhīṣma, endowed

with the power of death at will, lying on his bed of arrows for days

together, and waiting for the commencement of the uttarāyana, the

northern movement of the sun, before giving up his body. This

idea of the two paths seems to have greatly influenced the Indian

religious mind during the post-Vedic period. However, its hold

began to wane after the age of the Upaniṣads, and more especially

after the commencement of the Buddhistic and Jain movements,

and of post-Buddhistic Vedānta in its jñāna and bhakti expressions.

In certain schools of Vedānta, the devayāna evolved, after shedding

several of its Vedic details, into the concept of kramamukti, grad-

ual, krama, evolution of the soul, even in its disembodied state,

to spiritual emancipation, mukti.

Vedāntic Jīvanmukti

The darkness associated with the pitryāṇa refers to worldliness,

and to the consequent absence of spiritual awareness. 'The bright-

ness of the devayāna indicates the presence of spiritual awareness.

But the Upaniṣads were not satisfied with these two paths. They

discovered a third alternative in jīvanmukti, liberation-in-life, con-

sequent on its discovery of the ever-pure, ever-perfect, and ever-

illumined Ātman as the true nature of man. This meant that the

highest spiritual freedom is not dependent on going to high and

higher spheres outside of oneself, nor on the death of the physical

body. It can be had here and now; for it is man's true nature.

'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' Perfection is to be had

in this very life through the achievement of the fullness of spiritual

awareness. This, as we have seen, is the theme of the first fourteen

verses of this Iśā Upaniṣad.

The Gītā also, following the Upaniṣads, expounds this as its

own view (VIII.27) after referring to the two types of post-mortem

excellences:

Nait eṣṭī pārtha jānann yogī muhyati kaścana;

Tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu yogayukto bhavārjuna—

'Knowing (the nature and scope of) these two paths, the yogī is

not deluded. Therefore, O Arjuna, at all times be steadfast in

yoga.'

It sings the praise of this highest excellence in several of its verses (V. 19 and VI. 31-32) in tune with verses six and seven of the Iśā Upaniṣad:

Ihaiva tairjitah sargo yeṣāṁ sāmye sthitam் manah;

Nirdosaṁ hi samaṁ brahma tasmād brahmani te sthitāh—

Sarvabhūtasthitam் yo māṁ bhajatyekatvamāsthitah;

Sarvathā vartamāno'pi sa yogī mayi vartate—

Ātmaupamyena sarvatra samam் paśyati yo'rjuna;

Sukham் vā yadi vā duḥkham் sa yogī paramo matah—

Throughout the Gītā there is this great emphasis on the achievement of a character which is spiritual through and through. So also in the Upaniṣads. But both mention lesser spiritual ideals also, ideals which appealed to some section or other of the seekers. Udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tvātmaiva me matam—‘All these seekers are noble indeed, but the jñānī (one who realizes the one Self in himself and in all in this very life) is My very self’, says Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā (VII. 18). This generous inclusive attitude is the special characteristic of Vedānta.

Prayer for Passage to Heaven

This seeker of the Iśā Upaniṣad prays to be taken by the northern path, by the path of light, by taking which he need not be born again; he will gradually attain, in a disembodied state, the highest plane of the brahmaloka, the equivalent of the Heaven of Christianity. He does not mind the enormous slowness involved, in view of its sureness.

This was also the highest plane in terms of contemporary thought. The Īśā Upaniṣad forms a part of the Vājasaneyī Samihitā—the only Upaniṣad that is part of a Samihitā, the earliest part of the Vedas. The Upaniṣads generally form the concluding portions of the later part of the Vedas—the Brāhmaṇas. Not being systematic expositions, the Upaniṣads also contain ideas of earlier thought developments side by side with the highest reaches of their own thought.

So here we have a seeker who seems to be unaware of the lofty spiritual ideas and sentiments of the earlier verses of the Īśā Upaniṣad, or, if aware, not sure of his spiritual strength to live in that atmosphere. So he resorts to the earlier Samihitā and Brāhmaṇa ideas and prays for a passage to Heaven:

Agne naya supathā rāye—‘O Agni, lead me by the good path to reap the fruit of my actions.’

Agni, meaning fire, is here used in a technical sense; it is not the fire that we are familiar with, but the primordial divine energy that sustains this universe.

Asmān viśvāni deva vayunāni vidvān—‘Thou knowest, O God, all our actions.’

I have not to tell you about them and about my spiritual assets; there is no secret hidden from you. Take me, therefore, by the bright northern path. And if I am not considered fit enough yet, please make me fit, by destroying any residual sin that may still be in me:

Yuyodhyasmad juhurāṇam eno—‘Please destroy the crooked sin in me.’

Heavy with sin man cannot make spiritual progress; sin makes for gravitation towards the earth; without its removal, the soul cannot hope to rise steadily towards higher and higher levels of being.

Then he finally yields up his soul to God in an inward salutation:

Bhūyiṣṭhām te nama uktim vidhema—‘I salute you again and again, but in speech only.’

The body is too weak to offer formal salutation; so please accept it given only in speech. Commenting on this, Saṅkara says:

Kintu vayam idānīṁ te na śaknumaḥ paricaryāṁ kartum; bhūyiṣṭhāṁ bahutarāṁ te tubhyam nama uktim namaskāravacanāṁ vidhema; namaskārena paricarema—

This elevation of the mind in humility and obeisance is all that I am capable of now. Please accept it and bless me, implores the devotee. As St. Paul says (1, Corinthians xv. 54-55):

'Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy sting?

O grave, where is thy victory?'

Two sentiments that are more often associated with the idea of salvation in India are disgust for the world and fear of rebirth. In a general way these two are found, with the second slightly modified, in all the salvationist faiths of the world. In the spiritual education of man these sentiments have a valid part to play. But many religions have overplayed them, and have consequently made a sombre and cheerless outlook characteristic of the religious life. The joy of God has been overshadowed by the sorrows and thwartings of the world. The sunny heights of the former seemed to have been reserved only for the greatest mystics of religion. The great Muslim woman saint, Rabiya, was asked. 'Do you love God?' 'O yes', she replied. 'But do you not hate the devil?' was the second question. 'My love for God does not give me time to hate the devil', was the characteristic reply. 'O God, save us from sullen saints', exclaims St. Teresa. Guru Nānak and several other Indian saints were intensely human and endowed with humour and laughter.

But the two fears mentioned above seem to have been overplayed in India. Our later religious books are heavy with these two sentiments. And our people in general have sought in religion only one blessing—a cessation from rebirth. This fear of life, this hope of salvation, this intense religious desire to escape from rebirth, have gone so far as to throw into the shade the problems and prospects of the brief spell of human life on earth. This helped to develop a negative attitude which, in its extreme forms, illustrated the sentiments in the lines of a German poet:

ĪŚA UPANIṢAD–5

Sweet is sleep; death is better;

But it is best never to have been born.

This negative attitude has been digging deep into the Indian mind during the last thousand years: It has resulted in an excessive individualism and lack of social awareness, and made man unfit to pursue not only his spiritual welfare but also his worldly welfare. Fear beyond a certain measure is harmful to character. Excessive fear inhibits personality and results in tortuousness of behaviour and even hypocrisy.

The Indian Fear of Rebirth

How did this happen to us? The answer will be found in our history of the past two thousand years. The weakening process started with the neglect of social ethics, dharma, in the interest of mokṣa, understood as other-worldly salvation. This set in in the wake of the national upsurge caused by salvationist faiths like Buddhism, Jainism, and later Hinduism. The warning of the Īśā Upaniṣad: 'Into deeper darkness, as it were, do they enter who delight in vidyā', was not heeded; neither was any attempt made to understand correctly the positive and strengthening message of the Gītā and to live by it. Inner weakness invited external troubles in the form of foreign invasions.

These external pressures became endemic for centuries, thwarting at every step the national purposes. Weakness begat only further weakness, illustrating the warning of Jesus: 'For he that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.' Continuous thwarting created a conditioned reflex first of fear, then of apathy, and finally of resignation. The peasant worked hard at the plough and raised a good crop; the artisan worked with his deft hands and produced things of beauty and utility. But before they could enjoy the products of their labours, an invader came and deprived them of their hard-earned wealth. This happened generation after generation. First, it was invaders from outside; later the despoilers were bred from within by chaotic political conditions. The continuous depredations of foreign invaders and petty local chieftains made the peasant, the artisan, and the common people of India develop a conditioned reflex of fear of the world around them and apathy as to their own lot in it. Swami Vivekananda refers

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to this tragic situation in one of his letters (Complete Works, Vol. VIII, Eighth Edition, p. 307):

"Trodden under the foot of the Hindu, Mussalman, or Christian, they have come to think that they are born to be trodden under the foot of everybody who has money enough in his pocket. They are to be given back their lost individuality. They are to be educated."

This long experience of slavery and oppression affected the minds not only of our masses but also of our other classes. The character of the average educated citizen of India, even today, is an assemblage more of negative virtues than of positive ones. There is a strong tendency in us to avoid difficult situations, to escape responsibility, and generally to resort to easy and cheap ways in earning wealth, acquiring knowledge and education, and even in the matter of realizing God.

The Vedāntic Message of Fearlessness

The human mind in India needed a new education in fearlessness and strength, and in a cheerful acceptance of life and its responsibilities; it stood in urgent need of education for manliness and true godliness. And it got this from the Upaniṣads through Swami Vivekananda. This education in fearlessness has the power to awaken the people as a whole to the heaven of freedom and delight. Under its influence the people will see the world, and their own life'in it, in a new light. Swami Vivekananda says (ibid., Vol. III, p. 160):

'If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upaniṣads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word fearlessness. And the only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.'

And so he exhorted ('The Mission of the Vedānta', ibid., p. 193):

'Teach yourselves, teach every one his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity. Aye, if there is anything in the Gītā that I like it is these two verses, (XIII. 27, 28) coming out strong as the very gist, the very essence, of Kṛṣṇa's teaching:

""He who sees the supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, the imperishable in things that perish, he sees indeed.

""For seeing the Lord as the same, everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by the self, and thus he goes to the highest goal."

Thus there is a great opening for Vedānta to do beneficent work both here and elsewhere. This wonderful idea of the sameness and omnipresence of the supreme Soul has to be preached for the amelioration and elevation of the human race, here as elsewhere.'

Fear of death, fear of life, and fear of being reborn, must give way to an all-round fearlessness. Weakness and cowardice are worse deaths than physical death. In the words of Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, II. ii. 32-33):

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

Is there a philosophy which can generate and sustain such a spirit of valour, of heroism, capable of releasing vast stores of human energy? Yes, say the Upaniṣads; yes, says the Gītā; and yes, says Swami Vivekananda. It is the knowledge of the truth of the Ātman, the immortal Self of man. Herein is the basis of true religion, as understood in Vedānta. The more spiritual a person, the more fearless he is, and the more gentle and compassionate. These are the fruits of the knowledge of truth. In the words of Swami Vivekananda ('My Plan of Campaign', ibid., p. 224):

'And here is the test of truth—anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating.'

The excessive fear of rebirth among our people received its much-needed corrective not only from Vivekananda's teachings but also from his own personal testament expressed in one of his most passionate utterances (ibid., Vol. V, p. 136):

'And may I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls—and, above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship.'

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True Spirituality

This is a refreshingly new attitude for us in India. There is true spirituality in it; and fearlessness, love, and service flow from it. It is the worldly mind that is afraid of the world. The spiritual mind looks upon the body as the best servant and the most useful instrument for achieving life-fulfilment—worldly as well as spiritual. The possession of a physical body, with the senses and the mind in strength and vigour, becomes an opportunity and a delight when life is inspired by motives spiritual and human. In the context of such motives, life becomes a Kurukṣetra, a holy battle-field. Man enters this battle to win for himself a steady and perfect character, and he learns to take in his stride all its ups and downs of happiness and misery, gain and loss, and victory and defeat. The Gītā treats this attitude as the first step in ethical and spiritual life (II. 38):

Sukhaduḥkhe same kṛtvā lābhālābhau jayājayau;

Tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivaṁ pāpamavāpsyasi—

This is the gift of a true and robust philosophy to the human mind; the criterion of its truth is the spirit of freedom and fearlessness, love and service that it imparts to human life. We have had a taste of that free and fearless mind in the recent decades of our history. The prison is viewed in one light by the criminal, and in quite a different light by a man like Mahatma Gandhi and by his bands of satyāgrahis. The criminal, with his unfree mind, dreads the prison and likes to avoid going there; but a Gandhi, with his free mind, moved by pure passion to free millions of his fellow countrymen from the larger prison of political subjection, had not only no dread of prison but also welcomed every opportunity to go into one. Thus a change in attitude made all the difference between a satyāgrahi and a criminal with respect to prison life. Similar is the position with regard to rebirth and life in the world. Fear of the world and fear of life is an unspiritual attitude entertained only by the worldly-minded. Life in the world is not the same as worldliness; just as being in a prison is not the same as being a criminal. There have been men who have gone to prison to study prison conditions in order to improve them. The world acclaims them as great humanists.

ĪSĀ UPANIṢAD–5

Birth in a Punyabhūmi

Life in the world is viewed from one angle by the timid and worldly-minded, and from quite a different angle by the heroic and spiritual-minded. The widespread fear of rebirth among the religious-minded in India is the offshoot, not of religion, but of a general national weakness. ‘Spirituality declines when it falls into the hands of people who are weak and without control over their senses’, says Śaṅkara in his commentary on the Gītā (IV. 2). Prahlāda and Rantideva and the many Bodhisattvas, who are some of the finest specimens of Indian spirituality, joyfully forswore their own salvation in order to help the struggling souls in the world.

Indian religious thought has visualized India as a punyabhūmi, holy land, and karmabhūmi, land of work, where souls are born not to indulge in sense pleasures but to work their way to the realization of God. It recognizes the presence of God in every country in the world as the indwelling Divine in the hearts of men and women; but these lands are visualized as bhogabhūmis, lands of pleasures, affording all scope for the satisfaction of the senses and the sense-bound mind. Its vision of India as a holy land, and as such conducive to man’s spiritual evolution, derives from the fact that its landscape of rivers and mountains, plains and hills, has been sanctified for ages by the touch of a galaxy of divine incarnations and holy saints and sages; birth in India is coveted even by the gods in heaven. Says the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (V. xix. 20-22):

Etadeva hi devā gāyanti:

Aho amīṣām kimakāri śobhanam prasanna eṣām sviduta svayam hariḥ; Yairjanmalabdhān nrṣu bhāratājire mukundasevaupayikam sprhā hi naḥ—

“‘Oh! What auspicious deeds have these done that Hari (the indwelling God) Himself has become pleased with them—deeds by which they have obtained birth in the continent of India, a birth which is the means for the service of Hari? We also keenly desire (to have) this (good fortune)’.

Kim duṣkarair naḥ kratubhīḥ tapovratair dānādibhirvā dyujayena phalgunā;

Na yatra nāräyānapādāpañkaja-

smṛtiḥ pramuṣṭātiśayendriyotsavāt—

""What have we achieved by winning this heaven, small in

itself, but involving austere sacrifices, penaces, fastings, gifts, and

other means? Here (in heaven) we lose the (very) memory of

the lotus feet of Näräyana (the indwelling God), due to an abun-

dant exuberance of sense enjoyments!"

Kalpāyuṣāṁ sthānajayāt punarbhavāt

kṣaṇāyuṣāṁ bhāratabhūjayo varam;

Kṣaṇena martyena kṛtaiṁ manasvināḥ

sannyasya saṁyāṁtyabhayaiṁ padaiṁ hareḥ.—

""Far better it is to win a few moments of līfe in India than

aeons of life in these celestial regions; because, there. heroic souls

can achieve, in a moment, the state of fearlessness in God, by

renouncing in Him all actions done by their perishable bodies." "

What tragic irony that men in India learnt to fear and despise

that life on its soil which was coveted by their own gods in heaven!

And our people pine to go to a post-mortem heaven, unmindful

of the fact that a greater heaven lies about them!

Today, more and more of our people are learning to under-

stand and appreciate the meaning and significance of this heroic

approach to life and religion. This is Vivekananda's gift to our

people, and to men and women everywhere. He took out of the

heart of the Upaniṣads and of modern thought the message of a

man-making education and religion, and he preached it from the

housetops in East and West alike. Said he ('My Plan of Cam-

paign'; Complete Works, Vol. III. pp. 223-24):

'Men, men, these are wanted....A hundred such and the world

becomes revolutionized....For centuries people have been taught

theories of degradation. They have been told that they are nothing.

The masses have been told all over the world that they are not

human beings. They have been so frightened for centuries, till

they have nearly become animals. Never were they allowed to

hear of the Ātman. Let them hear of the Ātman—that even the

lowest of the low have the Ātman within, which never dies and

never is born—of Him whom the sword cannot pierce, nor the fire

burn, nor the air dry, immortal, without beginning or end, the all-

pure, omnipotent, and omnipresent Ātman! Let them have faith

in themselves.... What we want is strength, so believe in your-

selves. We have become weak, and that is why occultism and mys-

ticism come to us, these creepy things; there may be great truths

in them, but they have nearly destroyed us. Make your nerves strong. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want.'

No truer words about what blessings the Upanisads hold for modern man have been uttered or can be uttered.

SEVEN

KENA UPANIṢAD—1

We now commence the study of the Kena Upaniṣad. In the traditional enumerations, this Upaniṣad is placed second, the first being the Īśā Upaniṣad, the study of which we completed in the last lecture. This, too, is a short Upaniṣad; it has thirty-five verses, divided into four chapters.

The very title of this Upaniṣad is philosophically significant. Kena in Sanskrit implies a question, and means 'by whom?' Philosophy matures only when it becomes a critical estimate of experience and all its assumptions; otherwise it remains dogmatic and immature, or sceptical and over-mature. This Upaniṣad registers the appearance of critical philosophy in India at a very early period in her long history.

The Critical Approach in Philosophy

In dogmatic philosophy, the power of the senses and the mind to apprehend reality is assumed. In critical philosophy, this assumption is questioned and subjected to a rigorous examination. Through such questioning of basic assumptions and the rigorous examination of experience, the Kena Upaniṣad helps us to discover in experience itself the presence of the Infinite and the Absolute as the pure Self.

In the history of modern western philosophy, Kant is considered to be the initiator of critical philosophy. For the first time he asked the basic question: Has the human mind the capacity to apprehend reality? It was he who made the science of epistemology, the study of the nature of knowledge, an essential part of modern philosophy. India had, ages ago in her Upaniṣads, recognized the significance of this discipline of epistemology. The critical approach and the questioning spirit pervade every Upaniṣad; but the Kena Upaniṣad represents them in a special sense—in its approach and treatment as well as in its very name.

Philosophy, according to Vedānta, is the product of jijñāsā, critical inquiry. The Gītā asks man to know Truth through paripraśna, thorough questioning (IV. 34). Such critical inquiry was directed not only to things and events of the outer world of nature, but also to the things and events of the inner world of man.

including mind and its power to know and the status of the ego.

The need for the study of the nature and methods of knowledge,

which the Upaniṣads recognized long ago, is being increasingly felt

by modern science. Says Eddington (The Philosophy of Physical

Science, p. 5):

'We have discovered that it is actually an aid in the search for

knowledge to understand the nature of the knowledge which we

seek.'

Thanks to this spirit and approach upheld by the Upaniṣads

and the Gītā, religion in India became not a search for a creed,

but a search for an experience of God, a search in which question-

ing and inquiry hold a high place together with faith. Says Robert

Ernest Hume, one of the great English translators of the Upaniṣads

(Thirteen Principal Upaniṣads, 'Introduction' p. 30, footnote):

'The earnestness of the search for truth is one of the delightful

and commendable features of the Upaniṣads.'

This Indian philosophical approach receives strong endorse-

ment, in effect, from the modern scientific spirit and temper. The

Upaniṣads do not offer us spiritual food already cooked and ready

for eating. On the contrary, they invite us to participate in the

search for spiritual truth; they tell us that truth is not ours until

each one of us participates in its search and makes it his own.

As expressed by Śaṅkarācārya in his Vivekacūdāmaṇi (verse 54):

Vastusvarūpam sphuṭabodhakṣuṣā

svenaiva vedyaṁ na tu paṇḍitena;

Candrasvarūpaṁ nijacakṣusaiva

jñātavyam anyairavagamyaṁte kim?—

'The true form of Reality should be known through one's own

bodhacakṣu, clear eye of understanding, and not through (the

proxy of) a scholar; the true form of the (full) moon should be

known by means of one's own eyes only; how can it be known

by proxy?'

The Critical Approach in Religion

This is the tenor of the approach to religion in India. The

Ātman, Self, and the Paramātman, the Supreme Self or God, shall

not remain mere words, but shall become verities of direct exper-

ience; the words must be pierced through and the meaning obtain-

ed. This search for meaning, this striving to go beyond the surface

to the depths, from appearance to reality, is both religion and

philosophy, according to the Upaniṣads. India does not treat them

as two separate disciplines. When separated from the spirit of

religion, philosophy becomes intellectualism, cold, dry, and formal;

when separated from the temper and approach of philosophy, re-

ligion, similarly, becomes an aimless exercise of the emotions, ever

tending to become narrow, dogmatic, and intolerant. The Upan-

iṣads present philosophical reality as a value to be sought after

and experienced by the individual. This flow of philosophy and

religion into the river of lived experience is the unique feature of

Vedānta.

Ātmā vā are draṣṭavyaḥ—‘the Ātman is to be seen’, says

Yājñavalkya to his wife Maitreyī (Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad: II,

4.5).

Vedāhametaṁ puruṣaṁ mahāntam

ādityavarnaṁ tamasaḥ parastāt—

'I have realized this infinite Person, luminous as the sun and beyond

all darkness of ignorance', says the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (III. 8).

From the time of the Upaniṣads of antiquity to Sri Rama-

krishna in modern times, this has been the authentic language of

philosophy and religion in India. The famililar expression of the

Indian seers is: 'I have seen; I have realized; and you also can see;

you also can réalize'. In this approach belief becomes provisional;

the great teachers, while imparting their knowledge to their stu-

dents, ask them to treat this knowledge only as a working hy-

pothesis. The students are asked to validate it by personal ex-

perience. This finds clear and powerful expression in Buddha's

famous address to the Kāāmās delivered a few months before his

`passing away (The Aṅguttara Nikāya, Pali Publication Board, 1960

Edition, Nālanda-Devanagari, Pali Series, Vol. I, 3.7.5):

Iti kho, kālāmā, yaṁ taṁ avocumha—etha tumhe, kālāmā, mā

anussavena, mā parāmparāya, mā itikirāya, mā piṭakasampadānena,

mā takkhetu, mā nayahetu, mā ākāraparivitakkena, mā diṭṭhinijjh-

ānakkhantiyā, mā bhabharūpatāya, mā samaṇo no garūti. Yadā

tumhe, kālāmā, attanā va jāneyyātha—ime dhammā kusalā, ime

dhammā anavajjā, ime dhammā viññuppasatthā, ime dhammā

samattā samādinnā hītāya sukhāya saṁvattantīti, atha tumhe,

kālāmā, upasaṁpajja vihareyyāthā'ti, iti yaṁ taṁ vuttam

paṭicca vuttam—

“This I have said to you O Kālāmās, but you may accept it, not because it is a report, not because it is a tradition, not because it is so said in the past, not because it is given from the scripture, not for the sake of discussion, not for the sake of a particular method, not for the sake of careful consideration, not for the sake of forbeating with wrong views, not because it appears to be suitable, not because your preceptor is a recluse, but if you yourselves understand that this is so meritorious and blameless, and, when accepted, is for benefit and happiness, then you may accept it.'

The Spiritual Urge

This is the tremendous urge in the heart of man—the urge to realize the truth, to possess the truth, and not to live merely on the plane of words and concepts. If God exists, I must realize Him; if there is a soul in me, I must see it, realize it. It is not enough that I believe in it, or that some body of specialists, like a church, believes in it on my behalf. On matters spiritual, India was never lukewarm; in this, her chosen field, she was deeply earnest and intensely practical. We get a glimpse of this mood in the seeker of the Kena Upaniṣad referring to whom Śaṅkara says in his 'Introduction' to this Upaniṣad:

Kaścid gurum brahmaniṣṭham vidhivadupetya, pratyagātmaviṣayādanyatra śaraṇamapaśyan, abhayam nityam śivam acalam icchan, papraccha—

And the question asked is, in brief, 'By whom are the mind, the senses, and the life of man directed?'

Thus the Kena Upaniṣad is in the form of a dialogue between a spiritually illumined teacher and an earnest spiritual student. The quotation from Śaṅkara gives us an insight into the student's frame of mind. He had long been in search of truth. He had probed into the mystery of the universe and discovered the universe to be changeful, evanescent. He had subscribed to the current belief in an extra-cosmic omnipotent and omniscient God, the Brahman, infinite and immortal, behind the universe, and had found this belief logically tenable. In the strength of this belief

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in an Infinite behind the finite, in an Absolute behind the relative,

in an immortal and changeless Being behind the world of death

and change, the student could conduct his life in the finite world

of change and death, remain content therewith, and easily pass in

society for a philosopher or a man of religion.

But this student is not content with that; he has a questioning

mind. He is not satisfied with a logical Absolute, or with the

God of a monotheistic religious creed; neither is he satisfied with

his conventional life in the world of change and death. He wants

to experience the Immortal, realize the Infinite and the Absolute;

he has already received what Wordsworth terms 'intimations of

immortality'; he is convinced that there is a focus of immortality

hidden somewhere in the universe of experience. He has tried

through science to locate it in the external world, but he has

found that world, in its near or far aspects, in its microscopic or

macroscopic dimensions, ridden with finitude, change, and death.

He has examined, through philosophy, the concept of the Absolute,

Brahman, and found it intellectually satisfying but emotionally

cold. He has scrutinized, through religion, the concept of God,

and found it emotionally satisfying but intellectually uncertain.

Reality as revealed by each of the disciplines of science, philosophy,

and religion is satisfying in itself but, being compartmental, is

non-negotiable with the others. Shall the human mind remain

content with this situation in which reality, as apprehended by

each of these three disciplines, remains fragmented, conditioned,

and therefore finite? Man's insatiable hunger for truth and life-

fulfilment cannot rest at this. He will not be fully satisfied until

he unifies his experience by discovering the One behind the many.

He must break this impasse or break himself in the attempt.

The Inadequacy of Knowledge from 'Without'

This is the unique characteristic of the spiritual mood and

urge in which is found a confluence of the moods and urges of

science, philosophy, and monotheistic religion. These disciplines

deal with the universe of experience only from without, and their

limitations may possibly proceed from that approach. But is there

another approach which may help man to break this impasse, lead

him to the heart of the Immortal and the Infinite, and provide him

with a key with which to open the doors of all the compartments

of knowledge and experience which have hitherto remained water-

tight? The universe of experience certainly must have a 'within'. Is there an approach to this 'within' of things?

The sages of the Upaniṣads dared to ask this question; and did not stop till they found the answer. Modern science also is beginning tc ask this question today. It has been driven to it by the utter inadequacy of its knowledge of external nature, vast and stupendous though it be; and by the inability of that knowledge to solve the mystery of that nature. To quote again the clear words of Eddington to which I referred when discussing verses 6 and 7 of the Īśā Upaniṣad (Space, Time and Gravitation; concluding passage):

'And yet, in regard to the nature of things, this knowledge is only an empty shell—a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content.'

But where shall we find that content and how? Eddington gives a hint:

'All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness.'

And he develops the significance of this hint:

'Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! it is our own.'

The Importance of the Knowledge from 'Within'

If man's mind and consciousness provide 'a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics', science will be only true to its objective and function if it seriously investigates this aspect of the universe of experience. This is what ancient India did in her Upaniṣads. Modern science too is forging ahead in this field through its investigations into the science of life and the science of mind. Here we may recall once again the words of the paleontologist, the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin which I quoted during my exposition of the Peace invocation of the Īśā Upaniṣad (The Phenomenon of Man, p. 56):

'It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, an "interior" appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a

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rent (italics not author's). This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another, this "interior" should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double aspect to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time—in the same way, for instance, as it is granular: co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things.'

The more the 'sciences' progress, the more is the conclusion forced upon science that the mystery of the external world is overshadowed by the mystery of man himself, of his mind and self-awareness. This fact is noted by Lincoln Barnett in words which I quoted during my exposition of verses 6 and 7 of the Īśā Upaniṣad (The Universe and Dr. Einstein, pp. 126-27):

'In the evolution of scientific thought, one fact has become impressively clear: there is no mystery of the physical world which does not point to a mystery beyond itself.'

And what, then, is this key mystery? Barnett gives the hint: 'Man is thus his own greatest mystery. He does not understand the vast veiled universe into which he has been cast for the reason that he does not understand himself.'

The Unification of All Experience

The study of the vast cosmos with its suns and moons, stars and nebulae did not reveal this 'within' of things. It was first revealed when nature evolved the phenomenon of life in the uniqueness of the living cell. Here nature revealed for the first time, in a rudimentary and hazy way, something of its profound interior depths; it was a revelation of a deeper aspect of the mystery of nature 'as it were seen through a rent', in the picturesque words of Chardin. This rent was widened with every advance in biological evolution, first with the appearance of the simple nerve fibre, then the more complex nerve-ganglion, then the spine and the central nervous system, and lastly with the cerebral cortex in man. In these unique steps we find nature astir, awake, and becoming aware, and, finally, self-aware. Has not nature then two aspects—the one unconscious, acit, and the other conscious, cit? And how can a philosophy such as that of modern science claim completeness if it does not possess an insight into both the cit and acit aspects of nature, an insight into both the 'within' and the 'without' of things? The Reality which Vedānta upholds is this totality of nature, this unity of both cit and acit. Says Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā (VII. 4-7):

Bhūmirāponalovāyuh khaṁ manobuddhir eva ca;

Ahaṁkāra itīyaṁ me bhinna prakṛtiraṣṭadhā—

Apareyam itastvanyāṁ prakṛtiṁ viddhi me parām;

Jīva bhūtāṁ mahābāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat—

Etat yonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇītyupadhāraya;

Ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayastathā—

Mattah parataṁ nyāyat kin cid asti dhanañjaya;

Mayi sarvamidaṁ protam sūtre mani gaṇā iva—

Comments Saṅkara on the third verse:

Prakṛtidvayadvāreṇa sarvajña īśvaraḥ jagataḥ kāraṇam—

The concept of a self-evolving cause is common to Vedānta and modern science. Science had, till now, conceived of its self-evolving cause only in material terms; it could not do anything else so long as it viewed nature only from 'without'. But now it is becoming increasingly convinced that there is also the need to view nature from 'within', that the information that nature furnishes of its 'within' dimension, in its phenomena of life and awareness, needs to be evaluated by a new critique of the 'within' and not by the erstwhile critique of the 'without'.

Says the great neurologist Sir Charles Sherrington (Man on His Nature, p. 38, Pelican Edition):

'Today Nature looms larger than ever and includes more fully than ever ourselves. It is, if you will, a machine, but it is a partly mentalized machine and in virtue of including ourselves it is a machine with human qualities of mind. It is a running stream of energy—mental and physical—and unlike man-made machines it is actuated by emotions, fears and hopes, dislikes and love.'

184

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

The Grip of the Inner World on the Indian Mind

The study of nature in its manifestation as man is a study fraught with momentous philosophical and spiritual consequences. These consequences are bound to be faulty and harmful if that study is entirely conditioned by the sciences of external nature; it is a fruitless attempt to solve the mystery of man with the help of sciences like physics and astronomy, chemistry and physiology only. These deal only with the surface man, with 'man the known'. And this aspect of man is only the continuation in him of physical nature. But the real man, 'man the unknown', in the language of Alexis Carrel, eludes the grasp of these sciences. There is another science which deals with this subject, which dares to penetrate into the depths of human nature and unravel its mysteries and, through such unravelling, unravels also the mysteries of the rest of nature. This is adhyātmavidyā, the science of the Self, the science of the 'within' of things, which gripped the attention and interest of the sages of the Upaniṣads, and which has continued to grip the attention and interest of the Indian mind down the ages.

Ancient India did not neglect the sciences of external nature. Inspired by the idea that all knowledge is sacred, she pursued the investigation of external nature with zest, in both the theoretical and practical fields, and wrested from nature many a hidden truth and the ways of applying these truths for the good of man. In the course of these investigations she came across the mystery of the phenomenon of man and became intrigued by it. It became clear to her thinkers that the mystery of external physical nature was overshadowed by the mystery of man's inner nature. And this new mystery gripped their minds and, later, their hearts as well. It is no exaggeration to say that no people have devoted so much time and thought to this subject, and that consistently for thousands of years, as the people of India. They took it as a subject for specialization, and they reaped the good and bad fruits of all specialization. Referring to this Swami Vivekananda says, (Lecture on 'The Powers of the Mind', Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, pp. 20-21):

'At a certain period of Indian history, this one subject of man and his mind absorbed all their interest. And it was so enticing, because it seemed the easiest way to achieve their ends. Now, the Indian mind became so thoroughly persuaded that the mind could do anything and everything according to law, that its

powers became the great object of study. Charms, magic, and

other powers, and all that, were nothing extraordinary, but a re-

gularly taught science, just as the physical sciences they had taught

before that. Such a conviction in these things came upon the race,

that physical sciences nearly died out.'

This study of adhyātmavidyā or adhyātmayoga revealed to

them the true nature of man and the knowledge of the workings of

his inner world. To quote Swami Vivekananda again (ibid., p. 16):

"The science of yoga claims that it has discovered the laws

which develop this personality, and, by proper attention to those

laws and methods, each one can grow and strengthen his per-

sonality. This is one of the great practical things, and this is the

secret of all education. This has a universal application; in the

life of the householder, in the life of the poor, the rich, the man

of business, the spiritual man, in everyone's life, it is a great thing,

the strengthening of this personality. There are laws, very fine,

which are behind the physical laws, as we know. That is to say,

there are no such realities as a physical world, a mental world, a

spiritual world. Whatever is, is one. Let us say, it is a sort

of tapering existence: the thickest part is here; it tapers and be-

comes finer and finer; the finest is what we call spirit; the grossest,

the body. And just as it is here, in the microcosm, it is exactly

the same in the macrocosm. This universe of ours is exactly like

that; it is the gross external thickness, and it tapers into something

finer and finer until it becomes God.'

The King of Sciences

Adhyātmavidyā, the science of the Inner Self, eventually be-

came recognized in India as the king of sciences, rājavidyā. Indian

sociology, ethics, education, medical science, art, and literature

uniformly acknowledged the pre-eminence of this science. Adhyāt-

mavidyā vidyānām—'Among sciences I am the science of the Self',

says God through His incarnation as Krsna in the Gītā (X. 32).

Man's achievement of morality and ethics and the fruition of his

life and action proceed from his meditation on and realization of

his true Self which is the Self of all, says Manu (Manu Smrti,

XI. 82):

Dhyānikam sarvamevaitat yadetat abhiśabditam;

Na hyanadhyātmavit kascit kriyāphalām upāśnute—

'All this that has been said (before) has to be achieved through in-

ward meditation; one who does not know his inner Self will not

enjoy the fruits of any of his actions.'

The contribution of adhyātmavidyā to Indian religion and phil-

osophy is immense. Much of man's religion consists only of

186

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

anthropological phenomena like other similar phenomena. Anthrop- ology treats the gods of religion as the products of human imag- ination, of human wish-fulfilment. Sociology recognizes their social utility while questioning their truth value. The Biblical statement that God created man in his own image is the reverse of the truth acknowiedged by the psychology of religion that man created God or gods, in his own image. The gods of all such religions rest on the authority of a holy book or a body of priests. And such gods, bearing, in a large measure, a socio-political complexion, have always been at loggerheads with each other and with the secular urges of man, and will ever remain so.

On the other hand, reality apprehended by speculative philos- ophy is but a logical postulate; it is also, similarly, a product of the human mind. Its absolute is only the product of a logical necessity, the correlative of the relative.

The Absolute of philosophy and the God of religion both stand in need of a reassessment and restatement in the light of a penetrat- ing science of man, of his knowledge and awareness and inward depth. Modern thought's study and assessment of religion through anthropology, sociology, and psychology is a right step in this direct- ion; but it is only the first step. Modern philosophy since Kant has similarly subjected the philosophical concepts of reality and of the absolute to critical scrutiny through the science of episte- mology. The result has been disastrous to the absolute, which has consequently quietly faded away, along with its discipline, metaphysics, from modern philosophy. Instead of a search for the absolute or the ultimate reality, philosophy today has become reduced to a form of sociology or logic, or even a ponderous study of language. It has also voiced its dissatisfaction and protest against this extreme positivism by throwing up various schools of existentialism.

The disorderly array into which modern pnilosophy has been thrown, the mutual incompatibility of the gods of the dogmatic religions leading to their displacement by various forms of human- istic religion, and the self-admitted limitations of the positive sciences in the search for the ultimate meaning of things--these facts reveal the confused and murky atmosphere of the world of modern thought. The situation calls for a bold and penetrating approach to truth and reality on the part of modern man with a view to reconstructing science, philosophy, art, and religion, and

to bringing out their basic unity. He will receive immense help in

this task from the approach and method adopted by the Upaniṣad:

in the exploration of the inner world of man and the insights there-

by gained by them about the spiritual nature of man and the

universe.

Says Dr. S. Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosophy, Vol I, p. 150):

'The central theme of the Upaniṣads is the problem of philoso-

phy. It is the search for what is true. Dissatisfaction with

things and second causes suggests the questions, which we read at

the beginning of the Śvetāśvatara (I. 1-2): "Whence are we born,

where do we live, and whither do we go? O, ye who know Brah-

man, tell us at whose command we abide here whether in pain or

in pleasure. Should time or nature, or necessity or chance, or

elements be considered to be the cause, or he who is called Puruṣa,

the man that is the Supreme spirit?" In the Kena Upaniṣad the

pupil asks (I. 1): "At whose wish does the mind sent forth proceed

on its errand? At whose command does the first breath go forth,

at whose wish do we utter this speech? What god directs the

eye or the ear?"

The thinkers did not take experience to be an

inexplicable datum, as common sense does. They wondered whe-

ther the report of the senses could be taken as final. Are they

mental faculties by which we acquire experience self-existent, or

are they themselves effects of something mightier still, which lies

behind them? How can we consider physical objects, effects, and

products as they are, to be quite as real as their causes? There must

be something ultimate at the back of it all, a self-existent, in which

alone the mind can rest. Knowledge, mind, the senses, and their

objects are all finite and conditioned. In the field of morals we

find that we cannot get true happiness from the finite. The plea-

sures of the world are transient, being cut off by old age and death.

Only the infinite gives durable happiness. In religion we cry for

eternal life. All these force upon us the conviction of a timeless

being, a spiritual reality, the object of philosophical quest, the ful-

filment of our desires, and the goal of religion. The seers of the

Upaniṣads try to lead us to this central reality which is infinite

existençe (sat), absolute truth (cit), and pure delight (ānanda).'

The Monotheistic God in the Light of the 'King of Sciences'

The Upaniṣads transformed the concept of Brahman, the Ab-

solute of philosophy and the God of religion, into a given fact of

experience through the discovery of the Ātman, the infinite im-

mortal Self of man behind his finite mortal ego. Brahman thus

became not a mere logical absolute or a man-made god of socio-

gical utility, but the innermost Self of man and the Self of the

universe. As an impersonal-personal God, it is the living unity

of the impersonal background stuff or the primordial energy of the

universe as held by science, of the Absolute of metaphysics, and

of the personal God of religion. This discovery was greeted by

the Upaniṣads as a momentous advance in spiritual thought; and

it became the sheet-anchor of the monumental philosophical-religious

thought of India–Vedānta, and was interfused with every sub-

sequent development of Indian religious and philosophical thought.

The student in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad asks (III. 4.1):

Yat sākṣāt aparokṣāt brahma ya ātmā sarvāntaraḥ tam me vyā-

cakṣva—

“The Brahman which is immediate and direct, which is the inner-

most Self of all—please expound that Brahman to me.’

The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad says (II. 15):

Yadātmatattvena tu brahmatattvam

dīpopameneha yuktah prapaśyet;

Ajam dhruvam sarvatattvaiḥ viśuddham

jñātvā devam mucyate sarvapāpaiḥ—

‘When the self-controlled spiritual aspirant realizes, in this very

body, the truth of Brahman through the truth of the Ātman, self-

luminous as light, then, knowing the Divinity which is unborn,

eternal, and untouched by the modifications of nature, he is freed

from all sins.’

This momentous vision is not only enshrined in Indian spir-

itual thought but also forms the central spiritual element in ad-

vanced systems of religious thought everywhere in the world. The

Kingdom of Heaven is within us, assures Jesus. Jalālu-Dīn Rūmī

exclaims:

In each human spirit is a Christ concealed,

To be helped or hindered, to be hurt or healed;

If from any human soul you lift the veil

You will find a Christ there hidden without fail.

The continued vitality of Indian idealism has its source in

this vision. Every religious system which advocates as a spiritual

discipline closing the eyes and all the senses in meditation bears,

knowingly or unknowingly, the impress of this vision. The spir-

itual significance of Man, know thyself of ancient Greek thought

is also revealed in the light of this vision. It is this that sustains

the gentle and peaceful characteristics of the Indian cultural heritage and its ideal and practice of active toleration.

In picturesque language St. Augustine echoes this vision when he describes his long quest for God and his discovery of Him in his own being (Confessions, Book X, Everyman's Library Edition, Chapter 6):

'I asked the earth, and it answered me, "I am not He" ....I asked the sea and the deeps, and the living creeping things, and they answered, "We are not thy God, seek above us." I asked the moving air; and the whole air with his inhabitants answered. "Anaximenes was deceived, I am not God." I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, "Nor (say they) are we the God whom thou seekest." And I replied unto all the things which encompass the door of my flesh (the senses); "Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something of Him." And they cried out with a loud voice, "He made us." ...For truth saith unto me, "Neither heaven, nor earth, nor any other body is thy God." ...Now to thee I speak, O my soul, thou art my better part: for thou quickenest the mass of my body, giving it life. which no body can give to a body: but thy God is even unto thee the Life of thy life.'

The Unity of Brahman and Ātman

The transcendent God of the earlier Vedic monotheistic thought became the immanent One in the Upaniṣads without losing Its transcendent character. For, though given in experience. It is, as the witness of all states of consciousness, beyond speech and thought Through a penetrating study of the three states of waking, dream, and dreamless sleep, the Upaniṣads isolated the Self as pure subject and then discovered the spiritual oneness of the Self and the non-Self. 'The identity between the subject and the object was realized in India before Plato was born', says Dr. S. Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 169) and then quotes Deussen who speaks of the significance of this Upaniṣadic discovery for human thought (Deussen, Philosophy of the Upaniṣads, 1906 Edition, pp. 39-40):

'If we strip this thought of the various forms, figurative to the highest degree and not seldom extravagant, under which it appears in the Vedānta texts, and fix our attention upon it solely in its philosophical simplicity as the identity of God and the Soul, the Brahman and the Ātman, it will be found to possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upaniṣads, their time and country, nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for the whole race of mankind. We are unable to look into the future, we do not know

what revelations and discoveries are in store for the restlessly in-

-whatever new and unwonted paths the philcsophy of the future

may strike out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken,

and from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a general

solution is reached of the great riddle, which presents itself to the

philosopher in the nature of things, all the more clearly the further

our knowledge extends, the key can only be found where alone

the secret of nature lies open to us from within, that is to say, in

our innermost self. It was here that for the first time the original

thinkers of the Upaniṣads, to their immortal honour, found it when

they recognized our Ātman, our inmost individual being, as the

Brahman, the inmost being of universal nature and of all her

phenomena.' (italics not author's).

An Approach to the Study of the Kena Upaniṣad

and the Peace Invocation

The Kena Upaniṣad, to return to our present study, is a signif-

icant landmark in man's voyage of discovery of the Ātman. Em-

phasizing the spiritual character of the Absolute as the Self of

our self, it says, in refrain, in verses 4 to 8 of chapter one: 'Know

that to be Brahman and not what people worship here.' In the

fifth verse of chapter two, it speaks of the realization of Brahman

here and now. Through a delightful story narrated in chapter

three, it speaks of the incapacity of the sense organs to give in-

formation about Brahman; and, in the concluding verses of chapter

four, it refers to the ethical basis of the knowledge of Brahman.'

Before we take up the study of the verses of the Upaniṣad, we

shall make acquaintance with the two verses of the Śāntipāṭha

or Peace invocation attached to this Upaniṣad. According to tradi-

tional practice, the Peace invocation of eack Upaniṣad is meant

to be recited at the commencement and conclusion of the study

of that Upaniṣad; and these invocations vary according to the Veda

to which the particular Upaniṣad belongs. The Kena Upaniṣad

belongs to the Talavakāra recension of the Sāma Veda. At the com-

mencement of the study of the Īśā Upaniṣad, we studied its Peace

invocation and found it suffused with strengthening spiritual ideas.

All these Peace invocations breathe purifying and unifying

ideas and sentiments. They serve to calm and refresh the mind

and thus equip it for the silent adventure of thought ahead. In the

Kena Upaniṣad the first of the two verses of the invocation reads

as follows:

Om śahanāvavatu; sahanau bhunaktu;

sahavīryam karavāvahai;

Tejasvināvadhitamastu;

mā vidviṣāvahai.

Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ—

'Om. May Brahman protect us both; may He nourish us both; may we both achieve energy; may this study make us both illumined; may we never hate each other. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.'

The word 'both' refers to student and teacher. True education, even in the secular field, is a communion of minds between the teacher and the taught. The higher the subject the deeper that communion; and it is most intense in the spiritual field. Without this background, with teacher and taught not en rapport, education becomes mere static and uninspired instruction. All education imparts a measure of alertness and vigour to the human mind. The knowledge of the Ātman, however, is the source of the highest vigour, as this Upaniṣad will tell us later on: Ātmanā vindate viryam—'Man attains vigour through the Ātman.' Another important object of this study is illumination. Not stuffing the mind with facts and formulae, nor making it clever, is what is aimed at, but making it luminous with the luminosity of truth. The Ātman as pure awareness is the very principle of luminosity.

Tasya bhāsā sarvamidam vibhāti—'by Its light all this universe is lighted', says the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (II. 2.10).

Māsābda yuga kalpeṣu gatāgāmyeṣvanekadhā;

Nodeti nāstametyekaṁ saṁvid esā svayaṁprabhā—

'In all the countless months, years, ages, and aeons, past and yet to come, Consciousness, which is one and self-luminous, does neither rise nor set.' says the Paiñcadasi (I.7).

In the words of the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger quoted on an earlier occasion (What is Life?, pp. 90-91):

'Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular....Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown.'

The invocation ends with a prayer for a union of hearts among the students and between the students and the teacher.

The second invocation, which is more a prose piece, reads as follows:

Om āpayāyantu mamāṅgāni vākprāṇaścakṣuḥ śrotram atho balam indriyāṇi ca sarvāṇi; sarvam brahmaupaniṣadam; māham brahma nirakuryām; mā mā brahma nirakarot; anīraka­raṇam astu;

anirākaraṇam me'stu; tadātmani nirate ya upaniṣatsu dharmāḥ te

mayi santu, te mayi santu. Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ—

'Om. May my limbs become strong; also let my speech, vital

airs, sight, hearing, and all the sense organs be vigorous. All existence is the Brahman of the Upaniṣads. May I never deny Brahman; may not Brahman deny me. Let there be no denial at all; let there be no denial at least on my part. Whatever virtues are in the Upaniṣads, may they abide in me who am devoted to the Ātman; may they abide in me. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.'

Prayer for Strength and Light

The student of Ātmavidyā prays for strength of limb and vigour of the senses. The spiritual journey is a hard one; it is like walking on the sharp edge of a razor, as the Kaṭha Upaniṣad puts it (III. 14). The weak cannot realize this Ātman, says the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (III. 2. 4.). It is the young, the vigorous, the intelligent, and the strong that will realize the Ātman, say the Upaniṣads. In youth the senses are vigorous. But the mind which is devoted to the pursuit of the knowledge of the Ātman is stronger still and hence capable of disciplining the senses and turning their energies towards the Self. This makes the youth devoted to Āt-mavidyā a person of heroic calibre, dhīra in the language of the Upaniṣads. If the mind is weak or lazy, or inclined to obey the dictates of the senses, it loses the capacity and tendency to search and find the Ātman. It thus denies the ever-present reality of that which is the one Self in all; by denial is meant neglect. Brahman being the Self of all cannot neglect anyone. 'God is in all men; but all men are not in God; therefore man suffers,' says Sri Ramakrishna. So the student prays that there may be no neglect of Brahman at least on his part.

The only way to avoid this pitfall is by acquiring the requisite moral virtues which are the sine qua non of spiritual advancement and realization. Hence the student prays that the virtues pro-claimed in the Upaniṣads may abide in him. There are several passages in the Upaniṣads which speak of these virtues. The following from the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad is specially instructive (III. 1. 5):

Satyena labhyastapasā hyeṣa ātmā

samyagjñānena brahmacaryeṇa nityam;

Antaḥ śarīre jyotirmayo hi śubhro

yam pśyanti yataḥ kṣīṇadoṣāḥ—

KENA UPANIṢAD–1

193

“This Ātman can be realized by the constant practice of truth,

self-control, true knowledge, and chastity. The self-controlled

ones, freed from sin, realize Him, the luminous and the pure One,

within their own being.”

We shall see the Kena Upaniṣad telling us later on (IV. 8):

Tasyai tapo damaḥ karmeti pratiṣṭhā—

‘Of this wisdom, austerity, self-control, and (dedicated) work are

the foundations.’

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,’ assures

Jesus (Matthew v. 8).

Since the end of philosophy or religion, as understood by the

sages of the Upaniṣads, is not mere intellectual exercise nor the

acceptance of a belief or dogma, these moral qualities are insisted

upon which, when yoked to a passionate desire to realize Truth,

take man to the feet of God. We shall come across this passion,

which transmutes into pure forms all other passions in the heart

of man, as we dip into the verses of this Upaniṣad.

EIGHT

KENA UPANIṢAD–2

As we observed in the last lecture, the philosophy expounded

in the Kena Upaniṣad is critical in its spirit and temper; it marks

the development of the critical as different from the dogmatic ap-

proach in philosophy in ancient India. The aim of this approach

is to evaluate all knowledge and experience. The Upaniṣad ques-

tions the truth and validity of our sense knowledge and of the

knowledge gained by the logically and scientifically disciplined

mind. It considers this knowledge as knowledge of the relative

and not of the absolute. Even the knowledge of the disciplined

mind, which is science, is knowledge about shadows and not sub-

stance, being derived from sense-data.

Is this the whole of knowledge, it asks, or is there something

higher which is infinite and absolute? Ordinary philosophy can

give no answer to this question. The Kena Upaniṣad, however,

and other Upaniṣads also, give an answer. After assessing the

nature and scope of human knowledge as revealed through the

senses and the mind, the Kena Upaniṣad tells us that there is a

higher form of knowledge, a higher form of awareness, in which

knowledge and experience become one, and which transcends the

transient and the relative. This is knowledge of the true Self of

man which is also the Self of the universe. As such, the Absolute

and the Infinite need not remain a matter of mere surmise or belief

or inference.

Realization of the infinite and immortal Self, the 'Ātman' or

'Brahman' as the Upaniṣads term it, requires, however, discipline

and training. This very mind that is now in thraldom to the senses,

and, as such, is bound to the world of the finite and changing, can

be disciplined and trained in order to equip it for the realization

of the truth of Brahman. Indian philosophy therefore speaks of

the mind in two aspects. In one aspect it is in thraldom to the

senses and in the other it is free. This idea occurs again and

again in Indian spiritual literature. Says the Pañcadaśī (XI. 116):

Mano hi dvividhaṁ proktam śuddhaṁ cāśuddham eva ca;

Aśuddhaṁ kāmasaṁparkāt śuddhaṁ kāmavivarjitam.—

'Mind is said to be of two types: the pure and the impure. It is

impure when it is subject to the pressures of lust and pure when free from them.'

The Pure Mind

The pure mind has the capacity to realize Brahman. Brahman is said to be buddhigrāhyam atindriyam—‘grasped by the buddhi but beyond the senses,' including also the manas or the sense-bound mind. Pure manas is the same as pure buddhi which again is the same as pure Ātman, says Sri Ramakrishna. This is the endeavour that converts philosophy from a mere intellectual and academic pursuit into a spiritual adventure, and religion from a socio-political discipline into a sādhana for spiritual experience, uniting both religion and philosophy into a high spiritual adventure to realize truth and achieve the highest life excellence.

So then the question arises, how to make the mind pure? In every Indian spiritual treatise this subject is discussed: How to release the mind or awareness from its sense-bound finitude and restore it to its own true infinite expanse? The mind as it is now constituted is conditioned by various sense impressions which make it function in a finite way, which make it express itself through finite moulds. In the Candi or Devi Māhātmyam, one of the sacred books of India, we read (I. 47):

Jñānamasti samastasya jantoḥ viṣayagocare—

‘The jñāna or knowledge of all beings is conditioned by sense moulds.'

Everyone, including the animals, has knowledge which comes through the doorways of the senses. This knowledge trickles, as it were, through little bits of sense experience; but whereas this knowledge is fragmentary and unorganized in animals, it is in some degree organized and coherent in ordinary men, and most organized and coherent in scientific men. We make a serious mistake, however, when we think that this is the highest possible form of knowledge. All speculative philosophy commits this same mistake. Limiting itself to sense-data, to the data of the waking state only, it stultifies itself as philosophy by not taking all experience for its province of study.

The Upaniṣads did not allow Indian philosophy to commit this mistake. They broadened and deepened philosophy by taking for its data all experience—the world of facts as well as the world of values, the world revealed in all the three states of waking, dream,

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and deep sleep—and by a critical examination of the human mind,

its nature and possibilities. They discovered that this mind, when

trained and disciplined, revealed its own higher dimensions and

manifested newer powers of penetration. At a lower level, at the

psychic level these are called extra-sensory perceptions, where

human knowledge becomes freed from the limitations of the sensory

apparatus. But even this is limited to the world of the phenomenal,

the realm of appearances. Its highest penetrating power is mani-

fested when it reveals the noumenon behind all phenomena, the

imperishable reality behind the world of perishable forms. This

is parā vidyā, philosophy in the true sense of the term, according

to the Upaniṣads (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad: I.1.5.).

The Discipline of Mind in Science

In physics we are familiar with a similar physical phenomenon.

Ordinary light is a radiation of very little penetrating capacity.

But, by increasing the wave frequency of the radiation, science

has developed radiation of greater and greater penetrating capa-

cities such as X-rays, which can penetrate deeper still.

This phenomenon of the physical world we find repeated in

the mental world. The average mind is untrained, undisciplined,

and extremely dull in its operation; it stops at the very surface

of experience. It cannot penetrate the surface and proceed to the

depth of things. It cannot even raise the question whether there

is anything behind the appearance. Such is the raw human mind.

Yet the same mind can be trained and disciplined and made pene-

trating in its power; this gives us the scientific mind which has

disciplined itself in the systematic inquiry and investigation into

the universe of sensory experience. As a result of this discipline the

mind gets the power to exercise control over the sensory and motor

apparatus of the human system which, formerly, was under the

direct dictation of the sense-impressions and instinctual impulses.

The trained mind disciplines the imagination through reason and

develops a capacity to check and evaluate those impressions and

impulses, and find out what they mean and where they lead. As

a result of this scientific training, the mind develops the ability to

penetrate appearances and discover the truth behind, the laws that

control the appearances. This is the discipline of human knowl-

edge achieved in science.

If, however, a scientist stops there and refuses to proceed fur-

ther in the search for truth, it is because he has forsaken his scien-

tific spirit and become sterile or dogmatic. Why should he stop

there? If the mind can be trained to penetrate some appearances,

by still greater discipline it can be trained to penetrate the whole

crust of appearances that make up the universe of our daily ex-

perience, and penetrate to the noumenon behind all phenomena,

the changeless One behind the changeful many. This is the most

fascinating and intriguing subject for the human mind; though

baffled again and again, the mind will return to it again and again.

One may try to drag the mind away from such fundamental

questions; one may adopt philosophies of positivism and huma-

nism and try to direct the mind either to living a good life or to

doing good to the world; but it is only for a time.

Since the nineteenth century the philosophy of positivism has

become popular as a reaction against the irrational dogmas of reli-

gion and the inconclusive conclusions of metaphysics. This phi-

losophy registers the despair of the human mind arising from the

feeling that man can never know the ultimate truth. All meta-

physics is moonshine, says positivism. Let us resort to metaphy-

sics, if we must, for the little exercise of the intellect that it gives;

but let us, while doing so, work to make the world a little better,

a little happier than it is. Why bother about the subject of the

ultimate truth? The mind, in spite of its rigorous discipline in

science, is so constituted that ultimate truth is beyond its grasp;

so it is the part of wisdom not to waste time and energy on it.

This is the despair of the human mind that has gripped modern

man. And yet man cannot continue to live in this despair, in this

defeatist attitude. As in mountain climbing, where the unclimb-

ed peaks of a difficult mountain range pose a continuous challenge

to the courage and tenacity of the human spirit, and the tougher

spirits continue their unwearying assaults on the peaks until the

'ast and highest peak is gained, so in the search for truth, the chal-

le age and lure of the ultimate truth will make the courageous

among seekers restless with longing to scale the highest peaks of

knowledge and experience. Thus the human mind cannot be put off;

it is intrigued by anything that is hidden, by anything that is mys-

terious. If one group of persons does not ask such questions, an-

other will. If one scientist does not investigate them, another scien-

tist will. We see this actually happening today in the world of sci-

ence. There are some scientists today who would limit science merely

to its positivistic approach. But there are other scientists who try to

198 THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

take science beyond this limit, lead it into the region of fundamental questions, such as the nature of truth, the critique of causality, the nature of reality, and the nature and scope of human knowledge. These scientists may not achieve satisfactory answers to these questions, but they are bold enough to ask them; and in this they are in the true tradition of science and uphold its spirit of free and persistent inquiry into truth.

The Discipline of Mind in Vedānta

These are the two types of scientists in the modern world; and it is a happy augury that modern science, true to its spirit and tradition, is forging ahead in its fearless quest of truth, a virtue which it shares with Vedānta. Vedānta experienced the lure of unclimbed peaks of thought ages ago. It never admitted defeat. but marched on till the last peak was conquered. Referring to this aspect of Vedānta, Professor Max Müller says (Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, pp. 182-83):

'It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedānta should have been slowly elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy, as in mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of an ancient Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel, ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone in regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Ātman or Brahman.'

What was the driving force behind this bold venture of the Indian thinkers? A passion for truth and a passion for human happiness and welfare. Says Professor Max Müller (Three Lectures on Vedānta Philosophy, pp. 39-40):

'I believe much of the excellency of the ancient Sanskrit philosophers is due to their having been undisturbed by the thought of there being a public to please or critics to appease. They thought of nothing but the work they had determined to do; their one idea was to make it as perfect as it could be made. There was no applause they valued unless it came from their equals or their betters; publishers, editors, and logrollers did not yet exist. Need we wonder then that their work was done as well as it could be done, and that it has lasted for thousands of years?'

It is good for modern science to investigate the type of discipline that the Upaniṣadic thinkers gave to their minds by which they climbed the highest peaks of thought, by which they realized

the changeless One behind the changing many. His single-minded

love of truth, his intellectual discipline, and his moral purity, help-

ed the Upaniṣadic thinker to evolve a new mind of high penetrat-

ing power out of his given mind. Freed from its thraldom to the

senses, which is but the legacy of man's animal ancestry, and rigor-

ously disciplined in detachment and objectivity, which is the fruit

of an all-embracing renunciation, and stimulated by the love of

truth viewed as a focus of both knowledge and value, the human

mind, in the Upaniṣads, became the instrument of human enlight-

enment; pure manas became pure buddhi which in turn yielded

bodhi, full illumination. This marks man's achievement of

Buddhahood.

How important for science is the need to protect and cherish

this free and fearless pursuit of truth becomes clear when we con-

sider the various forces that tend to deflect the scientific mind today

from its main purpose of the pursuit of truth.

First of all, there is the lure of pleasure which science offers

through a highly efficient technical civilization; the fruit of science

may smother the root of science.

Secondly, there is the tendency to forsake the path of objec-

tivity due to the pulls of mutually hostile political ideologies.

Thirdly, there is the sheer laziness of the human mind which

makes it rest on its oars, unwilling to continue an arduous journey.

This gives birth to the dogmatic mood in science.

In earlier centuries science had occasionally to adjust with

religious dogmas; now it has to adjust with political dogmas. And

it has its own dogmas also to contend with. But no dogma can

kill the spirit of science.

The need of science today is to free its spirit from dogmas of

all kinds. whether religious or scientific, political or social. In this

task modern science will receive the most helpful stimulus from

Vedānta. For Vedānta is not committed to any dogma; it is com-

mitted to truth only and firmly believes in the power of truth to

overcome half-truths and untruths. Satyameva jayate nānṛtam—

'Truth alone triumphs, not untruth', is the watchword of the Upa-

niṣads (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad: III. 1. 6).

This was the quest pursued by the great sages of India and

they have left for posterity an imperishable legacy. Ages have

passed since the Upaniṣads were composed, but they held our atten-

tion and we study them even today when there is such an advancement of intelligence and learning unparalleled in earlier ages. This

can be explained only on the basis of the Upaniṣads having plumbed the depths of experience and brought information of vital importance for man both as to his own nature and as to the nature

of the universe. It is not merely the ideas that they convey to us that attract us but also the rigorous methods which they employ

and the dispassionate spirit which pervades them. The modern mind is at once attracted by the wonderfully critical approach

adopted by the Upaniṣadic sages, by which they closely studied the mind and its structure, its functions and its capacity, and fearlessly

evaluated all knowledge and information conveyed by the mind. They were determined to find out whether this mind could be

made into a fit instrument for their particular field of inquiry, the field of the knowledge of the Self, the field of the subject of all experience, as different from the objects of all experience which are

studied by the positive sciences.

In order to work in a particular field, a workman fashions his tools according to his requirements. A scientist or a philosopher

does the same, but his tool is thought itself. His mind and thought form the tool. When a student goes to a great scientist in order

to learn science from him, the teacher subjects him to the discipline of science–discipline in truth, in detachment, in objectivity,

and in precision. Varied and intricate is the training given to the science student to enable him to develop the ability to tackle the

vast array of data before him and become an original scientific explorer himself.

Vedānta, similarly, calls upon the spiritual seeker to subject himself to the type of discipline relevant to this field. Drśyate tva-

gryayā buddhyā sūkṣmayā sūkṣmadarśibhiḥ—‘The Ātman is certainly realized by the one-pointed minds of those who are capable

of seeing subtle truths, by minds which have been trained to grasp subtler and subtler facts’, says the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (III. 12). When

we enter the field of spiritual quest, when we seek ultimate Reality, we need a still more intense discipline of the mind. If the training

of the mind for science is rigorous, its training for spiritual realization is much more so; for, says the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (III.14):

Kṣurasya dhārā niśitā duratyayā

durgam pathas tat kavayo vadanti—

KENA UPANIṢAD 2

201

'That path is like the sharp edge of a razor, difficult to tread and hard to cross, so say the sages.'

Therefore we require much more intensive training in moral purity, alertness, and concentration. Without this training our search for spiritual truth will be vain. The mind will be drawn away from the search by distractions, by desires, and by laziness. The desire for name and fame may come, various other desires also may come to distract the mind; but the spiritual seeker has to keep himself to the straight and narrow path, which is compared to walking on the edge of a razor. 'For strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to perfection,' says Jesus Christ. This is the training that was undergone by the great Indian sages and this is the training that we also must undergo if we wish to equip our minds for this spiritual field of investigation: by such training our minds will develop that penetrative power which alone can help us to pierce the veil that hides the ultimate truth of Brahman from us.

The Power of Discipline

In our daily life we see how things and forces acquire this penetrative power when subjected to certain conditions. Even the most flimsy things of the physical world can be given extraordinary strength or penetrative power if subjected to certain conditions. Air, for example, is considered to be a very insubstantial thing; but when put under pressure, it will acquire high penetrative power; compressed air can cut into rocks. If air can be disciplined into such a powerful instrument, why not the mind of man?

The mind may be very flimsy now; it may be weak and unstable; it may have no penetrating power; the slightest obstacle coming in its way may make it recoil and lose initiative. But it need not remain in this flimsy state. It can be strengthened by training. A single thread is so weak that it can be broken by a slight pull. But combine that thread with many threads, twist them together to make a rope, and it can control an elephant. This is the classical example given in the scriptures to remind us that the mind can be trained in strength and resilience, and given the capacity to penetrate into the heart of truth.

The most important requirement, then, in the search for truth is this training and disciplining of the mind, of the whole mind. Part of this training lies in what we may call the secular field, the field

of social and educational endeavour. Even in these fields it is dis-

cipline that gives the mind greater energy and power.

It is the greatest misfortune of the Indian nation today that

large numbers of people have not realized the importance of self-

discipline as an essential aspect of the educational and social pro-

cess. They think that they can achieve greatness by leaving the

mind to follow its own whims or the dictates of the sense organs.

The word 'discipline' is a bugbear to many people. It only shows

that we have not fully grasped the meaning of freedom. It is the

slave that resents all discipline; the free man welcomes all oppor-

tunities for self-discipline. Indiscipline is the way to make the

mind weaker and weaker and make it unfit either for life in the

world or for life in God.

Greatness in any field is never achieved without tremendous

inner discipline. Energy disciplined is energy increased; and in the

spiritual field, such increase is both in quantity and quality. That

is the nature of all energy, physical or non-physical. The psychic

energy in the human system can be raised to the highest level in

quality and quantity only through inner cultivation; there is no

other way, say the Upaniṣads again and again. The sooner our

people realize this truth, the sooner our young people grasp the

meaning of this vital idea, the better for them and the better for

the nation. Self-discipline is the way to achieve strength of will,

breadth of sympathy, loftiness of character, and consequent all-

round social and spiritual efficiency. It is like raising bumper

harvests through intensive farming with the help of scientific

agriculture.

From Manliness to Godliness

This is the royal way to achieve greatness in the secular field,

in the world of daily endeavour. The same discipline, carried one

step further, takes us into the world of spiritual aspiration and

realization. We make a great blunder when we think that the mind

that is unfit for the world can be made fit for God. And yet this

is a very common mistake that we make. Again and again we

find inefficiency masquerading as high piety. Indian society has

permitted and encouraged this mistake for too long. Too long have

we clung to one-sidedness in education, leading to one-sidedness

in character and personality. And this in spite of the clear and

bold teaching of the Gītā that godliness is the fruition of manli-

ness and not its negation. Be a man first, and then try to be a

saint, is the teaching that we received from Swami Vivekananda. Manliness comes first and then comes godliness. Many of us, however, tried, and still try, to be saints first. We put the cart before the horse and lose both manhood and sainthood in the bargain. This wrong method and its harmful fruits for the individual and the nation were pointed out to us by our great seer, Swami Vivekananda, who also opened up to us the purifying, strengthening, and unifying message of the Upanisads and the Gītā; he revealed to us the nature and scope of an education based on the infinite Self within every man and woman which will lead to both manliness and godliness.

This great literature, the Upanisads and the Gītā—and the Gītā too is described as an Upanisad—forms a single core of inspiration to lead us to higher and higher levels of life expression and thus bring out the best in human life. And what is that best in human life? It is infinite truth itself; and not merely truth, but also infinite beauty and goodness and joy. The true Self in man is all these. And the Upanisads summon us to the joyous adventure of the quest for this truth through a converging life-endeavour:

Tad eva brahma trām viddhi nedam yad idam upāsate—

The mind is like a musical instrument which will produce good music only when properly tuned. If the strings are too loose or too tight the best music cannot be produced. The perfection of the human system, both mind and body, is to be sought for and struggled for; and when it is achieved the music that will come out of it will be the music of truth, knowledge, beauty, and bliss. This is the highest experience, which is also the highest knowledge, and the Upanisads want to give man a taste of this, here, in this very life, as the Kena Upanisad will tell us later (II. 5)

In order to understand the Upanisads and to profit from them it is necessary to reorient one's ideas of life and of religion. It is no post-mortem excellence that the Upanisads promise. Here and now, in this very body, with this very mind, man shall achieve the highest truth and the highest life-excellence. Here and now shall man cross the shoreless ocean of delusion and grief; and after crossing it, he will bless his psycho-physical organism for the invaluable

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service rendered by it, just as a sailor blesses the boat that has

carried him to a safe shore across the tumultuous ocean.

Thus we find that by appropriate training of body and mind

we are able to achieve high levels of truth and excellence. With

a trained mind man achieves the joys of health and character,

knowledge and beauty, culture and civilization; with a trained

mind he can also rise above all relativity and achieve the delights

of transcendental experience, the lokottara, as Buddhism puts it,

that which is beyond the world of the senses and the sense-bound

mind.

The Search for the Highest

The Self is beyond the world of the senses; and yet It impinges

upon us occasionally through sense experiences. 'Intimations of

immortality', Wordsworth called them. Perhaps we get an inkling

of It, and at once it passes away. The intimation comes, but the

next moment it vanishes. But we are intrigued by it, for it is

enough to convince us that a greater reality looms beyond the

horizon of the senses and that we must carry our pursuit there.

It is like a cloud covering the sun. During the rainy season here,

or winter season in northern climates, we long to see the sun, but

the clouds or fog hide it from our view. Suddenly the fog or clouds

part and the sun shines. But a moment later the clouds or fog

close in once again. But whether we see the sun or not, we know

that it is there. Our search for truth is just like this. Sometimes

truth gives us a glimpse of itself through our psycho-physical ex-

periences, through the daily events of our lives. Under the pres-

sure of our life in the world we soon forget and ignore these little

intimations from the beyond, but occasionally we stop and ask,

Is it true? Is there a life beyond this everyday sense life, some-

thing better, purer?

And so the search begins, the search for ultimate truth and

spiritual experience. All experience becomes subjected to scrutiny

to discover a clue to the reality that lies beyond. It is at this

stage that man becomes a pilgrim and his life becomes a quest that

will lead him in due time to spiritual truth. He becomes a sādhaka.

The true sādhaka is the spiritual aspirant whose heart genuinely

hungers for the transcendental pure life of the spirit.

It is just this earnest mind, this spirit of seeking, that the Kena

Upaniṣad expects of its student. When one is established in this

he has set his sail in the right direction He becomes what in Bud-

dhism is called a śrotāpanna, one 'who has entered the current'. A

boat, for example, is in the Ganges on its way to the sea. If it

loses its way and enters the canals and ditches on the way, it may

experience much movement but no progress. But once it attains

the centre of the river and enters its main current, it has nothing

more to fear. It will move steadily towards the sea. That is the

position of a seeker who is a śrotāpanna. Having attained the main

current of spiritual life, he goes forward step by step and realizes

the truth.

This sādhaka attitude must be pervasive of life itself. Whe-

ther we are at work, or in leisure, in whatever situation we may

be, the one constant factor will be that our hearts are pursuing

truth, that we are seeking the pure and the deathless Self in and

through all experience. All other things then become merely in-

cidental, the means of our attainment, the fields of our training. The

real quest is for none of these. The real quest is for the infinite

Truth, for the infinitely purest and best. Bhūmaiva sukham;

bhūmā teva vijijñāsitavyam—'The Infinite alone is happiness; the

Infinite alone should verily be sought after', says the Chāndogya

Upaniṣad (VII. 23. 1). In happiness and in misery, in success

and in failure, in every experience of life, we will then be in search

of that truth which we feel is there hidden somewhere in experi-

ence. This is the greatest adventure of the human spirit. Enter-

ing on it, man becomes seized with a new zest in life, for a life

lived for truth, and leaves far behind all possibilities of ennui

and frustration characteristic of life at the sense level. He be-

comes seized with a new restlessness, creative and constructive,

holy and pure.

All this the Upaniṣads express, and that in arresting language.

What varied expressions do the Upaniṣads adopt to impress upon

the sādhaka the greatness and might of the human spirit and its

ability to rise to and stay in the heights of spiritual experience and

realize the empire of delight of which it is born heir! The song

of man's true glory which the Upaniṣads sing is incomparable in

charm and power. Says Swami Vivekananda (Lecture on 'The

Sages of India', Complete Works, Vol. III, p. 253):

Beyond (waking) consciousness is where the bold search. Con-

sciousness is bound by the senses. Beyond that, beyond the senses,

men must go, in order to arrive at truths of the spiritual world;

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

bounds of the senses. These are called ṛṣis (sages), because they

come face to face with spiritual truths.'

In the Kena Upaniṣd we live in this atmosphere, the going

beyond the senses, the determined seeking for the Ātman, the

eternal truth of all experience. Somewhere in experience it is

hidden, and the search is on. The body and the sense-organs

which common sense and some schools of philosophy take to be

self-sufficient and final, are not so. They point to a reality beyond

themselves. With a view to knowing this, the student puts a ques-

tion to the teacher which forms the opening verse of this Upaniṣad:

Keneṣitam patati preṣitam manaḥ

kena prāṇaḥ prathamah praiti yuktah;

Keneṣitām vācamimāṃ vadanti

cakṣuḥ śrotram ka u devo yunakti—

'At whose desire and by whom impelled does the mind alight on

its objects? By whom impelled does the chief prāṇa (vital force)

proceed to its function? By whom impelled do men utter this

speech? What deva (luminous being) directs the eyes and the

ears?'

The new-born baby gets information about his environing

world through his sense organs. At birth, he is surrounded by a

world of things and persons which seem to him, in the words

of William James, 'a buzzing booming confusion'. Out of this buz-

zing confusion the child gradually develops knowledge by discri-

minating individual items, and the first thing he discriminates is

the sound, the presence, of his mother. The mother stands apart

from the general confusion around. Gradually the child attains

more and more knowledge and the confusion acquires some clarity

and order. Thus the child learns to understand the world, to grasp

it, to control it, to understand also hirnself, although only in a

hazy way, and is ultimately able to find his own way and become

independent of his mother. Then the child undergoes still fur-

ther training. He is educated. His knowledge of the world grows

clearer, though his knowledge of himself does not keep pace with

it. It remains a mixture of the self and the non-self, the latter

predominating. Perhaps he becomes a scientist and discovers

great scientific truths.

But his education can be carried still further; he can strive

to understand his true self, bereft of all non-self elements. This

step makes him a spiritual seeker, a true student of the science

of the Self. Realizing his Self as birthless and deathless, pure and

perfect, he sees the same Self as the Self of the universe and thus

achieves the philosophical vision of the fundamental spiritual unity

of all existence. This, according to the Upaniṣads, is, in brief,

the picture of the growth and development of human knowledge

and realization in its various stages, from the child to the perfect

man.

The Kena Upaniṣad, as we have seen above, opens with a ques-

tion from the student to the teacher; and this question is asked

by the higher reaches of modern neurology and psychology today.

Is there a principle of pure intelligence, uncompounded and free,

which directs the psycho-physical organism of man?

Our daily experience tells us that all our knowledge comes

through the gateways of the senses; and our minds organize it

into coherent forms. Is the self of man only a passing synthesis

of all these non-self elements, or is it a pure principle of intelli-

gence, without whose presence behind, the mind and the sense-

organs and the body become reduced to dull dead entities unable

to function?

The second verse gives us the teacher's reply:

Śrotrasya śrotram manaso mano yat

vāco ha vācaṁ sa u prāṇasya prāṇaḥ;

Cakṣuṣaḥ cakṣuḥ atimucya dhīrāḥ

'pretyāsmāt lokāt amṛtā bhavanti—

'It (the Ātman) is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the

speech of the speech, the prāṇa of the prāṇa, and the eye of the

eye. Wise men, separating the Ātman from these (sense func-

tions), rise out of sense-life and attain immortality.'

The tèacher assures the student that his intimation is correct.

That little intimation of the immortal which had led the student

to raise his question is true. Now he should try to make this

awareness clear and complete.

Explaining the meaning of the enigmatic words of the teacher,

Śaṅkara comments in a luminous passage (I. 2).

Asti kimapi vidvadbuddhigamyam் sarvāntaratamam kūṭastham

ajam ajaram amṛtam abhayam śrotrāderapi śrotrādi, tatsānarthyani-

mittam—'There is a changeless reality at the innermost core of man,

unborn, ageless, deathless, and fearless, which is revealed to the

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

intelligence of the wise, and which expresses itself through the

functions of the ear and other sense-organs, being the one source

of all their diverse energies.'

The teacher explains to the student that the power behind the

various sense-organs is the Ātman. As the intelligent and change-

less subject behind the activities of the changeful mind, senses, and

the ego, it is the true self of man. It is not a mere concept or

a statement, but the very principle of awareness which imparts

meaning to all concepts and statements. As the self, it is some-

thing that can be realized, and the way to realize it is by carefully

separating it from the conglomeration of senses and mind. The

senses deal with mortal perishable things of the objective or not-

self world; but the Ātman is the eternal subject, immortal and

changeless. To go beyond the mortal, from the not-Self to the Self,

requires extraordinary intelligence and courage; it requires high

heroism. These are virtues with which we are familiar in the

world; for they alone ensure success in achieving greatness in any

sphere of life. But at their ordinary level they are not adequate

for the purposes of achieving Self-knowledge. Comments Śaṅkara

(I.2) :

Nahi viśiṣṭadhīmatvamantareṇa śrotrādyātmabhāvah śakyah

parityaktum—

'Without extraordinary intelligence, it is not possible, verily, to

overcome the identification of the Self with the organs of hearing

and so on.'

It is then that man realizes that he is not this body, not a mere

bundle of sensations, thoughts, and emotions, but that he is divine.

This knowledge does not come to us easily. It requires penetrating

discrimination, for which one needs penetrating intelligence along

with great moral courage and heroism.

The Upaniṣads set out clearly and precisely the exact steps

which the human mind must take in order to attain this knowledge.

And they also clearly describe the dangers that lie in the way of

this quest, and ask the student to be armed with extreme alertness

and sincerity.

So here, in the second verse, we have the teacher's explan-

ation: the wise man separates the Ātman from the whole apparatus

of mind and body; he rises out of sense-life and attains immortality

through Self-realization.

The raw individual, as he is now, wrongly identifies the Ātman,

the Self, with the body and the senses; the more intelligent may

identify the Ātman with the mind or the ego. The wise one alone

knows that these are all not-selves, including the ego, subject to

change and destruction, but that his Ātman is the immortal and

the fearless one. Says Saṅkara in his Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (Verse 160):

Deho'hamityeva jadasya buddhiḥ

dehe ca jīve viduṣaḥ tvaham dhīḥ;

Vivekavijñānavato mahātmano

brahmāhamityeva matiḥ sadātmani—

'The dull-witted man thinks he is only the body; the book-learned

man identifies himself with the mixture of body and soul. But the

sage, possessed of realization through discrimination, looks upon

the eternal Ātman as his Self and thinks, "I am Brahman (the

Self of all)"'.'

We find an echo of this teaching in the second discourse which

Buddha gave to his five disciples in Sārnāth immediately after

his own enlightenment. Stripping the Self of all its unreal non-

Self elements, Buddha said .(Vinaya Piṭaka, Mahāvagga, Khandhaka, I. VI):

'Again what think you, Bhikkhus? Is the material form per-

manent (niccam) or impermanent (a-niccam)?'

'Impermanent, revered Sir.'

'But that which is impermanent, is that suffering (dukkham)

or happiness (sukham)?'

'Suffering, revered Sir.'

'That, then, which is impermanent, suffering, and by nature

changeable (vi-pariṇāma dhammaṁ), is it proper to regard it thus:

This is mine, I am this, this is my Self (etaṁ mama, eso'haṁ asmi,

eso me attā)?'

'No indeed, revered Sir.'

'Is sensation permanent? ... Is perception permanent? Is

predisposition permanent? ... That, then, which is impermanent,

suffering, and by nature changeable, is it proper to regard it thus:

This is mine, I am this, this is my Self?'

'No indeed, revered Sir.'

'And so, Bhikkhus, all material form, whether past, future,

or present, whether within us or external, whether gross or sub-

tle, low or high, far or near, is to be regarded with right insight,

as it really is (yathā bhūtaṁ), thus: This is not mine, I am not

this, this is not my Self ... All sensation ... gross or subtle, all

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

perception ... gross or subtle, ... all predisposition ... low or

high, ... all consciousness ... far or near, is to be regarded with

right insight, as it really is, thus: This is not mine, I am not this,

this is not my self.

'Regarding them thus, O Bhikkhus, an instructed Āryan (no-

ble) disciple becomes indifferent to (nibbindati) material form,

becomes indifferent to sensation, becomes indifferent to perception,

becomes indifferent to consciousnessness. Becoming indifferent, he be-

comes free from desire (vi-rajjati); through non-desire (vi-rāga)

he is liberated.'

Realizing thus, man becomes immortal, amṛtā bhavanti, says

the Kena Upaniṣad. In his first discourse in Sārnāth Buddha

spoke of his realization in identical language (Majjhima Nikāya,

Sutta 26):

'Hear me, Bhikkhus, the immortal has been gained by me. I

teach, I show, the Dharma. If you walk as I teach, you will ere

long and in the present life learn fully for yourselves, realize, and

having attained, abide in the supreme fulfilment of the holy life.'

Here, then, we have the foundation of the most practical philos-

ophy, the message of a universal and practical spirituality. The

knowledge of the Ātman, the knowledge that 'I am the pure and

deathless Self' is the rock on which we can raise a strong, steady,

and broad character. This teaching has been given to mankind

again and again by spiritual teachers. Jesus gave it in his parable

of the wise and foolish men who built their houses on rock and

sand respectively. (Luke, vi. 48-9).

The Gītā also develops its scheme of practical spirituality on

the basis of this divine in the heart of man and speaks of the man

of steady wisdom—the sthitaprajña—as the fruit of that spirituality.

In the next two verses of the Upaniṣad, the third and fourth

of chapter one, the teacher leads the student to a fuller under-

standing of the nature of the Ātman:

Na tatra cakṣuh gacchati na vāk gacchati no manah;

Na vidmo na vijānīmo yathaitadanuśiṣyāt—

'The eye cannot approach It, neither speech, nor mind. We do not

therefore know It, nor do we know how to teach It.'

Anyadeva tat viditāt atho aviditāt adhi;

Iti śuśruma pūrveṣāṃ ye naḥ tat vyācacakṣire

'It is different from what is known, and It is beyond what is

unknown. Thus have we heard from our predecessors who instru-

cted us about It.'

How guarded is the language used by the teacher here! The experience of which this is a report is difficult to communicate. Hence language has to be used with the greatest care. Language in the market place is of one type and language in the laboratory is of quite a different type. In the latter we need greater precision and brevity. And it is still more exacting in the plane of spiritual experience.

Here the sage is trying to communicate to the student his profound experience. But he finds it difficult to express this in words. So he simply says that 'the eyes do not go there', and so on. The eyes, ears, speech, and mind are among the instruments by which we gain experience and communicate it. They, however, fail with respect to the Ātman.

The more rarefied the ideas, the more refined must be the language employed to express them. But even the most purified, the most refined language fails to describe the Ātman. Similarly, thought, too, no matter how refined, fails to grasp the truth of the Ātman. So the sage adds, very simply, na vidmo, we do not know, na vijānīmo yathaitat anuśiṣyāt, nor do we know how to communicate It to you. The experience is so transcendental that it leaves no tracks behind. Says Gauḍapāda in his Māṇḍūkya Kārikā (IV. 95):

Aje sāmye tu ye kecit bhaviṣyanti suniścitāḥ; Te hi loke mahājñānā tacca loko na gāhate—

'They alone are said to be of great intellect (wisdom) who are firm in their conviction of the Self, beyond causality and ever the same. This, ordinary men cannot grasp.'

In his comment on the above verse, Śaṅkara quotes the following verse from one of the Smṛtis:

Sarvabhūtātmabhūtasya sarvabhūtahitasya ca; Devā api mārge muhyanti apadasya padaiṣiṇah—

'Even the gods feel puzzled while trying to follow in the footsteps of those who leave no track behind, of those who realize themselves in all beings and who are always devoted to the welfare of all.'

Again and again the Upaniṣads speak of Brahman as the end of a trackless path, but they do not leave us helpless. They assure us that difficult though it is to attain, it is not unattainable. It is not easy to teach It in the way one teaches other subjects, but the student can be helped and guided towards it. The first require-

212 THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

ment is that the student of this subject must be in a frame of mind somewhat different from that of the student of all other subjects. Here is needed extreme alertness and the capacity to learn from suggestive hints. In the earlier stages of education there is much talking and instruction by the teacher; and this becomes less and less in the higher stages where the student's mind, trained in alertness and thinking, becomes capable of learning from hints and suggestions from the teacher. This process reaches its highest consummation in the communication of spiritual knowledge. This finds vivid illustration in the episodes of teacher-student communication in several Upaniṣads.

Here, in this third verse of chapter one of the Kena Upaniṣad, we find the sage impressing upon the student that the knowledge he seeks cannot be given to him for the asking. He has to get it for himself. 'I am helpless to communicate it to you in the customary way', says the teacher. 'But I shall help you with a few hints.' The Ātman, says the teacher in the next verse, verse four, is anyadeva tat viditāt—'other than everything that is known'. That is the difficulty. Vidita means 'known'. Whatever is known through the senses and the mind, this Ātman is entirely different from all such things. So all our present knowledge will have to be turned aside. It has no value here. In this sphere, all positive science becomes nescience. It merely brings us knowledge of the world of change, of the drśyam, of the objective world. It gives us knowledge about things that are subject to the modifications of birth, growth, decay, and death. But the Ātman is none of these. It is other than everything that is known.

On hearing this, our minds tend to conclude that the Ātman, then, must be something unknown and unknowable, if not entirely non-existent. So why search for It? The mind naturally recoils from searching for something that is both unknown and unknowable. This idea entered several modern western philosophies, especially that of Herbert Spencer, after Kant had proved through his Critique of Pure Reason that the human mind had no capacity to know the noumenon.

The Upaniṣads, however, deal with this question rather differently. The Ātman, the absolute and the infinite Reality, beyond the categories of speech and thought, is beyond the categories of both the known and the unknown. The Ātman is not the unknown in this sense. For it is the most known of all, because It

is the Drk, the eternal Seer, the Self of all. It is not known as an

item of objective experience, but It is the Self of the knower him-

self, and, as such, more known than any known object. For what

is more known to me than my own Self? And so the teacher

gives the next hint that It is aviditāt adhi, 'more than (or beyond)

the unknown', and adds:

Iti śuśruma pūrveṣāṁ ye naḥ tat vyācakakṣire—

With what humility the sage speaks! He claims nothing for

himself. Swami Vivekananda often referred to this humility of

the sages of India who wrote great books but never claimed any

originality for themselves. A modern writer, on the other hand,

he said, perhaps steals from others most of the things he writes,

and then claims them all to be his own.

But there is a further significance in this statement made by

the sage of the Kena Upaniṣad. Since the Ātman cannot be per-

ceived by the senses and the mind, the student must first hear

about It from illumined souls. The sage has himself experienced

It, as his teachers had done before him. By this assurance the

student will be encouraged to enter upon the path himself, grasp-

ing it by the few hints that he has been given. If Ātman is beyond

speech and thought, if It is anyadeva tat viditāt, other than every-

thing that is known, and also aviditāt adhi, more than the un-

known, if It is beyond both known and unknown, then what is It?

And how are we to realize It? This is the question that the rest

of this first chapter attempts to answer, as we shall see in subse-

quent lectures.

NINE

KENA UPANIṢAD–3

The first four verses of the Kena Upaniṣad told us about the nature of the Ātman and the difficulṭy of its comprehension. While discussing that subject in the last lecture, I referred to the significance of this approach to man’s search for ultimate reality. The mind first seeks for the meaning of existence in the various objects and events of the external world. Unable to get conclusive answers from this field, man later turns his attention to that profound mystery which lies within, his own Self. The search for this mystery takes him beyond the world of relativity, the world revealed by speech and thought, to the world of pure Being and pure Awareness, the world of his true nature, the eternal non-dual Self.

This realization is the supreme achievement of the human genius; and it is the legacy which the Upaniṣads have left for all humanity. The Kena Upaniṣad itself will tell us about the glory of this realization a few verses later (II. 4):

Ātmanā vindate vīryaṁ vidyayā vindate amṛtam—

The Nature of Reality

In the last discourse we also discussed the difficulty experienced by the teacher of the Upaniṣad in communicating his realization of the Ātman. The language and the thought become extremely rarefied. The teacher and the student hardly speak; they just indicate their meaning in suggestive hints. In the transcendental realm of the Self, words assume their true status as suggestive symbols, the fainter, the more suggestive. As in Vedānta, so in the great scientific thought of today, words are valued as symbols only. As one great scientist has put it:

‘Words are but the counters of wise men; they do but reckon with them; but they are the money of fools.’

The third verse of the Kena Upaniṣad told us that this Ātman is beyond speech, beyond the sense of hearing, beyond the mind; and then the Upaniṣad added in the fourth verse:

Anyadeva tat viditāt atho aviditādhi—

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215

'It is other than all that is known, and It is also beyond the un-known.'

This statement conveys the philosophic serlousness of the Upaniṣadic mind. Commenting on this, Śaṅkara says:

Na hi anyasya svātmano viditāviditābhyām anyatvan vastunah saṁbhavati iti ātmā brahma—

'Apart from the Ātman (one's own Self), there cannot, verily, be any other entity which can be other than both the known and the unknown; and therefore the Ātman is Brahman.'

The Spiritual Character of the Absolute

The realization of the infinite dimension of the Self follows from the fact that it is other than the known and the unknown. If the infinite Self is our true nature, then we are essentially birthless and deathless and immortal. Death pertains to the body, to the sense organs, to the mind, and to the ego. These constantly change and finally die; they are not our Self, either singly or in combination. Our true form is infinite and immortal; this is elucidated in many an Upaniṣadic dialogue between disciple and teacher. These dialogues bear the impress of intimate communion between minds. They are not like the discourses given by a learned lecturer to a class of listless students of philosophy in some of our modern colleges. They bear the stamp of philosophical quest and spiritual earnestness. The teaching they convey proceeds from spiritual realization and leads to spiritual comprehension.

The Upaniṣad now proceeds to elucidate in refrain, in the fifth and subsequent four verses of its first chapter, the infinite nature of the Self of man:

Yadvācānabhyuditāṁ yenavāgabhyudyate;

Tadeva brahma tvaṁ viddhi nedāṁ yadidaṁ upāsate—

'What speech cannot reveal, but what reveals speech—know thou That alone as Brahman, and not this (anything objective) that people worship here.'

Yanmanasā na manute yenāhur mano matam;

Tadeva brahma tvaṁ viddhi nedāṁ yadidam upāsate—

'What mind does not comprehend, but what comprehends the mind—know thou That alone as Brahman, and not this that people worship here.'

Yacakṣuṣā na paśyati yena cakṣūṃṣi paśyati

Tadeva brahma tvam viddhi nedam yadidam upāsate—

'What sight fails to see, but what sees sight—know thou That alone as Brahman, and not this that people worship here.'

Yacchrotreṇa na śṛnoti yena śrotram idaṁ śṛutam;

Tadeva brahma tvam viddhi nedam yadidam upāsate—

'What hearing fails to hear, but what hears hearing—know thou That alone as Brahman, and not this that people worship here.'

Yat prāṇena na prāṇiti yena prāṇaḥ prāṇiyate;

Tadeva brahma tvam viddhi nedam yadidam upāsate—

'What smell does not reveal, but what reveals smell—know thou That alone as Brahman, and not this that people worship here.'

Conceptual God versus True God

These five verses proclaim the spiritual character of the Absolute or Brahman: It is the Self of man, which his sense-organs and mind cannot reveal but which reveals the sense-organs and the mind. These verses also stress the need to go beyond all idolatry in order to be able to worship God in spirit and in truth.

Vedānta treats as idolatry not only the worship of stocks and stones, which Semitic monotheism condemns as heathen superstition, but also the worship of the Semitic monotheistic personal God as well. For that God is a concept and, as such, is as much an item of the objective universe as the heathen idols are. Man creates his gods, including the monotheistic God. The only uncreated God is the eternal Self in man; and that is the God that Vedānta proclaims. Says Swami Vivekananda in his lecture on 'The Real and the Apparent Man' (Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 279):

'In worshipping God we have been always worshipping our own hidden Self.'

The God proclaimed by man's speech and thought is as much an idol as that fashioned by his hands. Dissatisfied with these creations of the human imagination, the Upaniṣads sought for the immortal and eternal God in the soul of man and found Him in 'the Ātman which is immediate and direct and the innermost Self of all', as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad majestically expresses it (III. iv. 1). The Upaniṣads also discovered that, illumined by the knowledge of this living God, all worship of idols becomes transformed into worship of ideals, idols becoming mere symbols.

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It is this philosophic comprehension that helped Vedānta to assume a sympathetic and understanding view of all forms of idol worship and all forms of popular worship. As the Ṛg-Veda put it: Ekaṁ sat; viprā bahudhā vadanti—‘Truth is one; sages call It by various names.’ It is equally the lack of this philosophic comprehension that made the Semitic religions dogmatic, narrow, and exclusive-minded, and made them condemn as superstition what they termed heathen idolatry of every kind, that is, all idolatry other than their own special brands. In the words of the historian, Toynbee (An Historian's Approach to Religion. pp. 282-83):

‘It seems to be a matter of historical fact that, hitherto, the Judaic religions have been considerably more exclusive-minded than the Indian religions have. In a chapter of the world’s history in which the adherents of the living higher religions seem likely to enter into much more intimate relations with one another than ever before, the spirit of the Indian religions, blowing where it listeth, may perhaps help to winnow a traditional Pharisaism out of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish hearts.’

The realization of the unity of Brahman and Ātman lies at the back of India’s charity and comprehension in the world of religion; her long history has been marked by a pervasive mood of acceptance of other forms of belief. This realization did not remain merely as a spiritual idea but became the inspiration of saints and simple devotees as much as of administrators and statesmen. It found brilliant expression in our time in Sri Ramakrishna who realized the universality of truth and the harmony of all religions. Man takes to a particular symbol of God and worships it. He is devoted to it. He ignores everything else; and he develops the feeling that that alone is true. that that alone is the way to salvation. He thinks that he alone has the light and all others are in varying degrees of darkness; and he then prays to his God: ‘O Lord, give to all others the light that I possess.’

This is how bigotry, narrowness. and, in its train, persecution come into the world. Opposed to it is the Indian idea that the divine Light is in the heart of all; that men approach It through the help of various symbols; and that the paths are many but the goal is one. This Indian approach makes for tolerance, understanding, and peace.

India discovered long ago the truth of the limitation of the senses. The senses reveal so little, though to an average man the senses and the mind are the gateways of all available knowledge.

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But as his understanding grows, man begins to realize more and more the utter incapacity of the senses to pierce appearances and give knowledge of truth. This understanding has come to modern science in the twentieth century; it was not there in the nineteenth century.

The teacher of the Kena Upaniṣad denies the power of the senses and the mind to reveal the reality of the Self; for that reality is the power behind even them. Can a torchlight help to reveal the sun? They perform their own limited functions with the nourishment drawn from that infinite source. The last chapters of this Upaniṣad, as we shall see later, expound this truth through an arresting parable.

Tadeva brahma tvam viddhi nedam yadidam upāste–‘Know thou That alone as Brahman, and not this that people worship here,’ says the Upaniṣad. This breathes the deep concern of the Upaniṣad to remove all traces of materiality and objectivity from man's conception of God, and to give him a living God in place of his anthropomorphic conceptions. This is the eternal Self of man. In the light of this living God, the anthropomorphic gods also become transformed into living gods, and the different faiths into tolerant co-operating units. Vedānta does not condemn or destroy any faith or form of worship. Its aim is to illumine every faith and every worship with the light of the one living God of all religions. Says Swami Vivekananda (Complete Works, Vol. II, pp. 81-82):

'What are these ideas of religion and God and searching for the hereafter? Why does man look for a God? Why does man, in every nation, in every state of society, want a perfect ideal somewhere, either in man, in God, or elsewhere? Because that idea is within you. It was your own heart beating and you did not know, you were mistaking it for something external. It is the God within your own Self that is propelling you to seek for Him, to realize Him. After long searches here and there, in temples and in churches, in earths and in heavens, at last you come back, completing the circle from where you started, to your own soul and find that He, for whom you have been seeking all over the world, for whom you have been weeping and praying in churches and temples, on whom you were looking as the mystery of all mysteries shrouded in the clouds, is nearest of the near, is your own Self, the reality of your life, body, and soul. That is your own nature. Assert it, manifest it. Not to become pure, you are pure already. You are not to be perfect, you are that already. Nature is like that screen which is hiding the reality beyond.'

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219

Every good thought that you think or act upon, is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the infinity, the God behind, manifests Itself more and more. This is the whole history of man.

Finer and finer becomes the veil, more and more of the light behind shines forth, for it is its nature to shine. It cannot be known; in vain we try to know it. Were it knowable, it would not be what it is, for it is the eternal subject. Knowledge is a limitation, knowledge is objectifying. He is the eternal subject of everything, the eternal witness in this universe, your own Self.

Knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degeneration. We are that eternal subject already; how can we know it? It is the real nature of every man and he is struggling to express it in various ways.'

Pitfalls in the Path

In the second chapter of this Upaniṣad we are treated to a subtle communication of spiritual truth from teacher to student. The teacher helps the disciple to capture the right frame of mind with which to comprehend this extremely subtle truth of the Ātman.

The disciple tries earnestly and feels that he has comprehended the truth well; and he expresses this to his teacher. But the teacher, in order to remove the least flaw in his understanding of so vital a truth, asks the student, in the very opening verse, to reassess himself carefully:

Yadi manyase suvedeti, dabhramevāpi nūnaṁ tvaṁ vettha brahmaṇo rūpam, yadasya tvam் yadasya deveṣvatha nu nū mīmāṁsyameva te; manye vidittham—

(The disciple, after reflecting further and fully realizing Brahman, replied):

'I think I have understood (Brahman).'

The teacher had a suspicion that the disciple had understood Brahman as the spiritual presence in the vast objective manifold; and even in this, he felt, the disciple had not grasped the infinite dimensions of that presence. Dabhramevāpi nūnaṁ tvaṁ vettha brahmaṇo rūpam—'very little indeed of Brahman's form have you known', said the teacher and continued: Atha nu te (brahma) mīmāṁsyam eva—'Therefore your Brahman needs further investigation.'

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

The disciple took the hint and sat quietly and thought deeply about the implications of the words of the teacher that Brahman is other than the known and beyond the unknown. 'What can this profound truth be?' In the depths of his meditation, the truth dawned on the disciple's pure mind and he exclaimed: Manye viditam—'I think I know it.'

The cautious mood and the careful approach on the part of disciple and teacher bespeak of the extreme subtlety of the subject. Easy and quick comprehension may turn out to be wrong comprehension, as in the case of Virocana, whose discipleship together with Indra under the teacher Prajāpati forms a fascinating section of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (VIII. vii-xv).

Referring to this episode in his comment on this verse of the Kena Upaniṣad, Saṅkara says:

Drṣṭaṁ ca, 'ya eṣo'kṣiṇi puruṣo dṛśyate eṣa ātmeti hovāca, etad brahma', ityukte prajāpatyaḥ paṇḍito api asurarāṭ virocanah, svabhāvadoṣavaśāt anupapadyamānamapi vīpa-ritamartham் sarīram ātmeti pratipannah. Tathā indro devarāṭ, sakṛt dvistriraktam ca apratipadyamānah, svabhāvadoṣakṣayam apekṣya caturthe prathamoktamēva brahma pratipan-navān—

It has been seen that when the teacher said: "The person that is seen in the eye, this is the Ātman, this is the immortal and fearless Brahman," Virocana, even though a scholar and ruler of the asuras and son of Prajāpati, on account of the blemish in his nature, and in spite of non-comprehension of the teaching, understood the opposite of what was taught, namely, that the body was the Ātman. Similarly Indra, the ruler of the devas, not comprehending the teaching at his first, second, and third attempts, grasped the truth of Brahman at the fourth attempt from the initial exposition itself, as a consequence of the destruction of the blemish in his nature.

It is a matter of daily experience in education that some students stumble many times in trying to understand even an ordinary subject. The capacity to grasp also varies from student to student. To quote Saṅkara's interesting remarks on this point from the same commentary:

Loke api, 'ekasmāt guroḥ śṛṇvatām, kaścit yathāvat pratipadyate, kaścit ayathāvat, kaścit viparītam, kaścit na pratipadyate; kimu vaktavyam ātmanīyam īmatattvam—

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221

'Even in the world, from among a group of students listening to

a teacher, some students grasp correctly, some wrongly, some just

the opposite, while some fail to grasp anything at all; (if this is

so in the worldly sphere), what to speak of the difficulty in com-

prehending the truth of the Ātman which transcends the senses?

Cautiousness of Statement

The student said: manye viditam-'I think I know it.' What

was the content of his realization? We have it in the next verse

(II. 2) in the words of the student himself:

Nāham manye suvedeti, no na vedeti, veda ca;

Yo nah tat veda tat veda no na vedeti veda ca—

'I do not think I know It well; nor do I think that I do not know

It; I know too. He amongst us knows It who knows that It is other

than the unknown and the known.'

In his commentary on this verse, Śaṅkara brings out the power

of spiritual conviction behind the words of the student:

Anyadeva tat viditāt, atho aviditāt adhi, ityācāryoktagama

sampradāyabalāt upapattyanubhavabalācca. jagarja ca brahma-

vidyāyām drdhaṇiścayatām darśayannātmānah—

'The teacher had said: "It is other than the known and also

beyond the unknown." On the strength of the spiritual tradition em-

bodied in that saying and on the strength also of rational convic-

tion and personal experience. the student roared (like a lion),

thus demonstrating his firm conviction in the knowledge of

Brahman.'

Nāham manye suvedeti--'I do not think I know It well.' This

kind of knowing—suveda—can apply only to things objective. But

Brahman is the eternal subject. And therefore the second negation:

no na vedeti—'But not that I do not know It'. How can the

student say that he does not know It when he has realized

It as his own Self? What he has achieved is not mediate knowl-

edge but knowledge immediate and direct, like the recognition of

one's own name; and so he adds: veda ca—'I know too.'

Says Śaṅkara in his Vivekacūdāmaṇi (Verse 532):

Devadatto'ham ityetat vijñānam nirapakṣakam;

Tadvat brahmāpy avedā'pyā brahmaṇi veditṛ"vedanam—

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

"The awareness "I am Mr. Devadatta" is independent of external

circumstances; similar is the case with the realization of a knower

of Brahman that he is Brahman.'

Questioned by the teacher, the student in the Kena Upaniṣad

clarifies himself in the second half of the verse:

Yo nah tat veda tat veda no na vedeti veda ca—

'He amongst us knows It who knows that It is other than the un-known and the known,'

And in the next verse (II. 3) the Upaniṣad itself clarifies the

student's statement:

Yasyāmatam் tasya matam் matam் yasya na veda saḥ;

Avijñātam vijñātām vijñātam avijānatăm—

'He knows It, who knows (conceives) It not; and he knows It

not, who knows (conceives) It. To the man of true knowledge, It

is the "unknown", while to the ignorant It is the "known".'

A concept or idea of Brahman is not Brahman. When a man

thinks he knows Brahman, he has formed only a concept of It; he

does not know Brahman truly. On the other hand, he who truly

knows Brahman, knows that he cannot know It through his sense-organs and mind. In the words of the Aṣṭāvakra Sam்hitā (XII. 7):

Acintyam cintyamāno'pi cintārūpaṁ bhajatyasau;

Tyaktvā tadbhāvanam் tasmāt evamevāham āsthitah—

'Thinking on the unthinkable One, one betakes oneself only to a

form of thought. Therefore giving up that thought, thus verily

do I abide.'

Sri Ramakrishna explains this truth through a parable (The

Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 1947 Edition, Ramakrishna Math,

Madras 4, p. 28):

'A man had two sons. The father sent them to a preceptor

to learn the knowledge of Brahman. After a few years they re-turned from their preceptor's house and bowed low before their

father, Wanting to measure the depth of their knowledge of Brah-man, he first questioned the older of the two boys. "My child," he

said, "you have studied all the scriptures. Now tell me, what is

the nature of Brahman?" The boy began to explain Brahman by

reciting various texts from the Vedas. The father did not say

anything. Then he asked the younger son the same question. But

the boy remained silent and stood with eyes cast down. No word

escaped his lips. The father was pleased and said to him: "My

child, you have understood a little of Brahman. What It is cannot be expressed in words.'

The greatest among the mystics of East and West have referred to this inadequacy of human language to communicate the deepest spiritual experience. The thought of Jacob Boehme, a great European mystic who was an unlearned shoe-maker, and of Eckhart, the scholarly saint, also of Europe, bears close kinship to the thought of the Upaniṣads. Says Boehme (Quoted by Evelyn Underhill: The Mystics of the Church, p. 217):

'I can but stammer of great mysteries like a child that is beginning to speak; so very little can the earthly tongue express of that which the Spirit comprehends.'

Says Eckhart:

""Thou shalt apprehend God without image, without semblance, and without means"—but for me, to know God thus, without means, I must be very He and He very me.'

Even great masters of language have felt a profound humility before the deep mystery of existence. Sings the English poet Tennyson in his In Memoriam (LIV):

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last—far off—at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

The Nature of Brahman-Realization

If Brahman is entirely unknown to the knowing ones—avijñātam vijānatăm—then what is the difference between the knowing one and the ignorant one? Therefore it cannot be that Brahman is entirely unknown to the knowing one. In what way, then, does he know Brahman? The next verse, verse four of chapter two, gives the answer to this question in one of the most profound utterances of all the Upaniṣads:

Pratibodhaviditam matam amptatvam hi vindati ;

Ātmana vindate vīryam vidyayā vindate amrtam—

'Indeed, he attains immortality, who realizes It in and through every bodha (pulsation of knowledge and awareness). Through

the Ātman he obtains strength and vigour, and through (Its) knowledge, immortality.'

Pratibodhaviditam means bodhain bodham prati viditam—known through every mental act. The Ātman as pure Awareness is the unchangeable witness of all mental states, whether waking, dreaming, or in dreamless sleep. Saṅkara's comment on this verse is illuminating:

'Sarve pratyayā viṣayībhavanti yasya, sa ātmā, sarvabodhān pratibudhyate, sarvpratyayadarśī, cicchaktiscarūpamātrah, pratyayaireva pratyayeṣu avisiṣṭatayā lakṣyate, nānyat dvāram ātmano vijñānāya—

'He is the Ātman to whom all mental modifications are objects of awareness, who knows all mental states, who himself is of the nature of the essence of pure Awareness, whose reflection is perceived by mental states in and through mental states as indistinguishable from them, there being no other means of knowing Him.'

The Ātman is the light of pure Awareness which lights up every act of knowledge and awareness of the mind. It follows accordingly that every mental modification reveals the light of the Ātman, reveals the light that lights up the modification. Hence the Ātman is pratibodhaviditam–‘known through every pulsation of knowledge and awareness'. As expressed by Saṅkara in his Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (Verse 217):

Jāgrat svapna suṣuptiṣu sphuṭataram yo'sau samujjṛmbhate

pratyagrūpatayā sadā aham aham ityantah sphurannaikadhā;

Nānākāravikārabhāgina imān paśyannabandhīmukhān

Nityānanda cidītmanā sphurati tam viddhi svamatin hṛdi—

'That which clearly manifests Itself in the waking, dream, and dreamless sleep states; which is inwardly perceived in the mind, in various forms, as an unbroken series of 'I' impressions; which is the witness of the ego, buddhi (intellect), etc. which are of diverse forms and modifications; and which shines as the eternal existence-knowledge-bliss Absolute, know thou this Ātman, thy own Self, within thy heart.'

KENA UPANIṢAD--3

The Continuity of the Indian

Spiritual Tradition

Spirituality, according to the Upaniṣads, is as much a communicable and verifiable truth as any physical scientific truth.

The behaviour of liquids, solids, and gases under high temperature or low, under high pressure or low, is scientific truth arrived at by experiment, and open to verification by any competent individual.

The Ātman, the divine nature of man, and Its realization, which this Upaniṣad expounds through a dialogue between a realized teacher and his earnest student, is truth similarly established by spiritual experiment, and verified by countless spiritual experiments in subsequent stages.

As in physical science. so in religion, we do not live on the plane of guessing or surmise but on the plane of verified and verifiable t..th.

This dialogue between teacher and student discloses the last siages of the journey of man to the spiritual centre of his being which is also the spiritual centre of all existence.

The summit of that experience is the truth expressed in the equation: Ātman is Brahman.

That experience makes the fortunate ones who achieve it universal in vision and sympathy.

The Kena Upaniṣad dialogue is not the account of a final and closed revelation which we are asked to accept in faith.

On the contrary, it is a revelation open to re-creation in his own life by every man and woman;

it has found verification in scores of spiritual experimenters in subsequent ages, of whom the most glorious and outstanding was Buddha.

It found its latest verification in Sri Ramakrishna in the last century.

The account of his Ad-vaita sādhanā under the guidance of his teacher, Totapuri, throws a flood of light on this Kena Upaniṣad dialogue and reveals the unbroken continuity of the Upaniṣadic spiritual tradition.

Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna

By about the end of 1865, when he was twenty-nine years old, Sri Ramakrishna had finished his ten years-long sāadhanās based on the path of bhakti or devotion in which the devotee looks upon God as a Person and as the Other.

He had been blessed with innumerable visions and other spiritual experiences.

Endowed with the highest purity and renunciation, his mind had attained an extraordinary moral and spiritual sensitivity which made it plunge into a divine mood at the slightest spiritual suggestion.

Absorbed in one of these moods, Sri Ramakrishna was one day sitting in

M.U.--15.

corner of the open portico at the bathing ghat of the Dakshineswar temple on the sacred river, the Gañgā. Just then a wandering monk, by name Totapuri, alighted from a boat at the steps of the ghat, and walked up to the portico. As soon as his eyes fell on Sri Ramakrishna, he felt an instant attraction for this young man and felt a conviction in his heart of hearts that he was far out of the ordinary.

Totapuri himself was out of the ordinary. Hailing from Punjab and entering the monastic life in his boyhood, he was endowed with a robust physique and an iron will; and he had a fascination for the impersonal God, the non-dual Brahman. After forty years of unremitting spiritual practice, performed on the banks of the sacred Narmada river in Central India, he obtained the fruit of this path of the Advaita Vedānta, the experience of nirvikalpa samādhi, the impersonal. unconditioned state which Śaṅkara describes thus in three glorious verses in his Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (408-410):

Kimapi satatabodham kevalānandarūpam nirupamamatīvelam nityamuktam nīḥam; Niravadhigaganābham niṣkalam nirvikalpam hrdi kalayati vidvān brahma pūrṇam samādhaŭ—

Prakṛtivikṛtiśūnyam bhāvanātitabhāvam samarasam asamānam mānasambandhadūram; Nigamavacanāsiddham nityamasmatprasiddham hrdi kalayati vidvān brahma pūrṇam samādhaŭ—

Ajāramaram asthābhāvavastusvarūpam stimitasalilarāśi prakhyamākhyāvihīnam; Śamitaguṇavikāram śāśvatam śāntamekàm hrdi kalayati vidvān brahma pūrṇam samādhaŭ—

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227

'The wise one realizes in his heart, in samādhi, the infinite Brahman, which is undecaying and immortal, the Reality which is the negation of all negations, which resembles the ocean when the waves have subsided, which is without a name, in which have subsided all the modifications of the guṇas, (nature's modes), and which is eternal, pacified, and One.'

Having achieved this blessed experience, Totapuri wandered from place to place without any aim or purpose of his own, but fulfilling inscrutable divine purposes. The incomparable strength and freedom behind that wandering is difficult to gauge by ordinary minds. We get a glimpse of it in Buddha's inspiring charge to the enlightened soul (Dhammapada):

'Go forward without a path! Fearing nothing, caring for nothing, Wander alone, like the rhinoceros! Even as the lion not trembling at noises, Even as the wind not caught in a net, Even as the lotus-leaf unstained by the water, Do thou wander alone, like the rhinoceros!'

Realizing Brahman as the one Reality, and looking upon the world as an appearance, Totapuri spent his life under the canopy of heaven, alike in storm and sunshine, maintaining himself on alms. His wanderings took him to many a holy place in India, including Gaṅgāsāgar in Bengal, where the holy Gaṅgā meets the sea. It was on his return journey from there that he went to the Dakshineswer temple which, thanks to the piety, generosity, and broad-mindedness of its founder, Rani Rasmani, was then drawing holy men, ordinary and extraordinary, from all creeds and sects. Some of these, like Jatadhari and Bhairavi Brahmani, had already met Sri Ramakrishna and guided him to realization through their respective spiritual paths of the bhakti school. Tota-puri represented an altogether different path, the path of jñāna, the path of the impersonal God, the path blazoned by the sages of the Upaniṣads and the great Buddha.

As soon as Totapuri's eyes fell on Sri Ramakrishna he recognized in him a fit aspirant for the path of the unconditioned and impersonal Brahman. He asked Sri Ramakrishna whether he would like to learn Vedānta. He told him: 'You seem to be an advanced seeker after truth. Would you like to be initiated in the path of Advaita realization?' Sri Ramakrishna felt a divine

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urge within to agree. Under Totapuri's directions, Sri Ramakrishna performed the various ceremonies preliminary to the grand ceremony of sannyāsa—total renunciation of the world. One day, about two hours before dawn, both repaired to a small hut in a sequestered spot, not far from Sri Ramakrishna's room. Totapuri administered to Sri Ramakrishna the traditional monastic vows of complete renunciation of all the pleasures of life, both earthly and heavenly, and the holy vow to dedicate all one's mind and heart to the highest truth of the non-dual Brahman, and to be a source of fearlessness to all beings. And in the stillness of that early dawn, the teacher and the disciple re-enacted the momentous drama of tangible spiritual communication which has so often been enacted in India before. Prostrating himself before his teacher, Sri Ramakrishna then took his seat to receive instruction from Totapuri in the philosophy of Brahman.

To quote the words of Swami Saradananda, one of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna (Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master, 1952 Edition, Ramakrishna Math, Madras 4, pp. 254-55):

'He (Totapuri) said to the Master: "The Brahman, the one substance which alone is eternally pure, eternally awakened, unlimited by time, space. and causation, is absolutely real. Through Māyā, which makes the impossible possible, It causes, by virtue of its influence. to seem (sic) that It is divided into names and forms. Brahman is never really so. For, at the time of samādhi, not even a drop. so to speak, of time and space. and name and form, produced by Māyā is perceived. Whatever, therefore, is within the bounds of name and form can never be absolutely real. Shun it at a good distance. Break the firm cage of name and form with the overpowering strength of a lion and come out of it. Dive deep into the reality of the Self existing in yourself. Be one with It with the help of samādhi. You will then see the universe, consisting of name and form, vanish as it were into the void; you will see the consciousness of the little "I" merge in that of the immense "I", where it ceases to function; and you will have the immediate knowledge of the indivisible Existence-Knowledge-Bliss as yourself. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (II. iv. 14) says: 'The consciousness, with the help of which a person sees another, knows another, or hears another, is little or limited; whatever is limited is worthless; for the supreme bliss is not there; but the knowledge. established in which a person becomes devoid of the consciousness of seeing another, knowing another, and hearing another, is the immense or the unlimited one. With the help of that knowledge, one gets identified with the supreme bliss. What mind or intellect is able to know that which exists as the Knower in the hearts of all?'"

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229

After instructing his disciple thus in the central ideas of the jñāna path of Vedānta, Totapuri exhorted Sri Ramakrishna to fix his mind on the unconditioned Brahman. This part of the momentous story is best told in the words of Sri Ramakrishna himself (Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Sixth Edition, pp. 189-90):

'After the initiation, Nangta, "the naked one" (this was the appellation which Sri Ramakrishna, out of respect, invariably used for his guru, who, being a monk of the Nāga Order, generally went about naked) began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedānta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive into the Ātman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in withdrawing the mind from all other objects except one, the all too familiar form of the blissful Mother—radiant and of the essence of pure Consciousness—which appeared before me as a living reality preventing me from passing beyond the realm of name and form. Again and again I tried to concentrate my mind on the Advaita teachings, but every time the Mother's form stood in my way. In despair I said to "the naked one", "It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with the Ātman." He grew excited and sharply said, "What? You can't do it. But you have to." He cast his eyes around, and finding a piece of glass he took it up and pressing the point between my eyebrows said, "Concentrate the mind on this point." Then with a stern determination I again sat to meditate, and as soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it severed it in two. There remained no more obstruction to my mind, which at once soared beyond the relative plane, and I lost myself in samādhi.'

Sri Ramakrishna passed into the unconditioned state of the nirvikalpa samādhi; the senses and the mind stopped their functions; the body became motionless. He had realized Brahman, become one with Brahman, beyond all speech and thought.

Totapuri sat for a long time silently watching his disciple. Finding him still motionless, he left the hut, locking the door from outside lest anyone should intrude without his knowledge; he remained outside awaiting the disciple's call from within to open the door. The day passed, night came, a second and a third day and night also passed, and still there was no call. Totapuri was astonished. He opened the door and entered the room. He was speechless with wonder to see Sri Ramakrishna seated in the very same position in which he had left him. The face was calm, serene, and radiant. In breathless amazement he examined the disciple's heart and respiration and touched again and again the disciple's

almost corpse-like body. There was no sign of consciousness. He cried in bewilderment at the miracle of this young man achieving in a single day this highest realization of nirvikalpa samādhi which had taken him forty years of hard practice to realize.

Totapuri immediately took steps to bring the mind of his disciple down to the world of phenomena. The little room rang with the holy mantra—Hari Om—uttered in a solemn tone by the teacher. Little by little Sri Ramakrishna's mind came to an awareness of the outer world; and as he opened his eyes, he saw his teacher looking at him with tenderness and admiration. The disciple reverently prostrated himself before the teacher who in turn locked him in a warm embrace.

The Fruit of Wisdom Is Strength

'Through Ātman man obtains real strength, and through knowledge, immortality': Ātmanā vindate vīryaṁ vidyayā vindate amṛtam, said verse four of the second chapter of the Kena Upaniṣad. Strength is the product of man's knowing himself. A little self-knowledge has enabled man to control animals physically stronger than himself. Men possessed of self-knowledge control men bereft of it. Ordinary self-knowledge can be used to control and exploit others; but self-knowledge proceeding from the Ātman, the one Self in all, confers universality of outlook and sympathy. as the next verse of this Upaniṣad will tell us. This Ātman is the infinite reservoir of all strength and energy. Its manifestation is what we achieve through proper education. A well-developed character manifests more of this innate strength and energy than an ill-developed character. There is the quality of innateness and inalienability in the strength derived from all forms of character as different from that derived from wealth and power and other external possessions. Hence character is the most dependable source of strength and energy. External possessions, on the other hand, can confer only limited strength and limited fearlessness. Of all character, a spiritual character, a character that draws nourishment from the Ātman within, manifests the greatest strength; for it overcomes death itself. Commenting on this passage, Śaṅkara says:

Dhanasahāyamaṁtrauṣadhitapoyogakṛtam vīryaṁ mṛtyuṁ na śaknoti abhibhavitum, anityavastukṛtatvāt; ātmavidyākṛtaṁ tu vīyam ātmanaiva vindate, na anyena, ityato ananyasādhanatvāt ātma-vidyāviryasya, tadev vīryaṁ mṛtyuṁ śaknoti abhibhavitum—

“The strength proceeding from wealth, friends, magic incantations,

drugs, austerity, and mind-control cannot overcome death; because

it is the product of things which are themselves transitory. The

strength proceeding from the knowledge of the Ātman, on the con-

trary, is attained through the Ātman only and not through some-

thing else. Thus the strength arising from the knowledge of the

Ātman, being self-attained, can alone overcome death, it being self-

attained and not mediated by some other thing.'

Being the source of supreme strength, this knowledge confers

also immortality. The knowledge that 'I am the Ātman' is also the

knowledge that 'I am immortal'.

The nature of this realization of immortality forms the theme

of the fifth and last verse of this second chapter which we shall

discuss in the next lecture.

TEN

KENA UPANISAD-4

In the last lecture the Kena Upaniṣad was expounding to us the nature of the highest spiritual experience which is so rarely obtained because it lies beyond the senses and the mind.

The Upaniṣad told us, in its own enigmatic language, that the profound truth of the Ātman, our immortal divine nature, is unknown to those who know but known to those who do not know. But if this truth is so transcendent and so extremely subtle, how are we to grasp it, to profit by it?

The Upaniṣad, in the fourth verse of chapter two, assured us that this Ātman, though it transcends the mind and the senses, has yet left its impress, its footprints, so to say, on the world of experience, especially on the mind and the senses:

Pratibodhaviditām matam amṛtatvam hi vindate—“Indeed, he attains immortality who realizes the Ātman in and through every pulsation of knowledge and awareness.'

Footprints of the Ātman on the Sands of Experience

The movements of the mind reveal the presence of the Ātman behind. Says the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (I. iv. 7):

Tadetat padanīyam asya sarvasya yad ayam ātma; anena hyetat sarvam veda. Yathā ha vai padenānuvindet evam—

‘Of all these, this Self alone should be realized; one knows all these through It. Just as one may get at (an animal) through its footprints, (so may one get at the Self through Its footprints on the sands of experience).’

Commenting on the above passage Śaṅkara says:

Kathañ punah etat padanīyam, iti ucyate; yathā ha vai loke padena; yavādi khurāṅkito deśaḥ padam ityucyate, tena padena, naṣṭam viitsitam paśum padena anveṣamāno anuvindet, labheta—

‘How, again, is This (Self) to be attained? It is thus replied: Just as, in the world, one may get back a missing animal that is wanted by seeking it through its foot, “foot” here means the ground with the print of hoof-marks left by a cow etc.’

The Kena Upaniṣad further told us that this realization is the source of infinite strength: Ātmavā vindata vīryaṁ vidyayā vindate

KENA UPANIṢAD—4

233

amṛtam—‘Man attains energy and vigour through the Ātman, and immortality through the knowledge of It.’

Change and death belong to the body, the senses, and the mind, to all things in our personality that are composite. But the Ātman is a simple and not a compound. Hence it is deathless. We become immortal when we become truly ourselves, when we know our true nature.

Scholarship versus Spirituality

This vidyā or knowledge is not the knowledge that we usually acquire through books or through the study of nature. That cannot confer immortality, as it deals with the perishable and the changeable and with things external to ourselves. This knowledge, on the other hand, has reference to the unchangeable in non-Self. It is beyond sense-knowledge; it is ‘beyond the known and the unknown’, which are the two categories of knowledge at the sense level, anyad eva tat viditād atho aviditād adhi.

When a man understands this, he will consider the enormous fund of scholarship hitherto gathered to be so much lumber in his head; he will then wish for nothing more than to get rid of this mental dead weight, this learned ignorance, and strive for true knowledge. When young Ramakrishna was pressed by his loving elder brother to go to school, he gave a reply characteristic of this mood and temper (Life of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 50):

‘Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education? I would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart and, getting which, one is satisfied for ever.’

When Swami Vivekananda, then young Narendra about to appear for his law examination, experienced this tremendous thirst for spiritual realization, the following interesting conversation took place between him and his master, Sri Ramakrishna (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 925):

‘Master (to Narendra, smiling): “Won’t you continue your studies?”’

‘Narendra (looking at the Master and M.): “I shall feel greatly relieved if I find a medicine that will make me forget all I have studied”.’

Says the Aṣṭāvakra Samhitā (XVI. 1 and 11):

Ācakṣva śrnu vā tāta nānāśāstrāṇy anekaśah;

Tathāpi na tava svāsthyam் sarvavismarāṇāt ṛte—

'My child, you may often speak on various scriptures or hear them.

Even then you cannot be established in the Self unless you forget

all.'

Haro yady upadeṣṭā te hariḥ kamalajo'pi vā;

Tathāpi na tava svāsthyam sarvavismarāṇāt ṛte—

'Let even Hara (Śiva), Hari (Viṣṇu), or the lotus-born (Brahmā)

be your instructor; even then you cannot be established in the

Self unless you forget all.'

The enormous energies proceeding from the personalities of

the great spiritual teachers of mankind like Buddha, Jesus, Rama-

krishna, and Vivekananda have their source in this immortal divine

Self. All knowledge is power; but Self-knowledge is power par

excellence.

Realization Here and Now

Having thus expounded the glory and excellence of this knowl-

edge, the Upaniṣad now proceeds to tell us, in the fifth and last

verse of chapter two, that this realization is to be achieved here

and now, in this very life, and not in a post-mortem heaven:

Iha cedavedīt atha satyamasti

na cedihāvedīt mahatī vinaṣṭiḥ;

Bhūteṣu bhūteṣu vicitya dhīrāḥ

pretyyāsmāt lokāt amṛtā bhavanti—

'For one who realizes It here (in this world) there is true life.

For one who does not so realize It, great is the loss. Discover-

ing the Ātman in every single being, the wise ones, dying to this

world (of sense-experience), become immortal.'

This is a great pronouncement of Vedānta. Truth is to be

realized iha—here and now, in this very life. This emphasis is

valid only if truth is our very nature, our very birthright. Truth

is the very Self of man, declares Vedānta. True life for man be-

gins only when he turns his energies in the direction of the death-

less Ātman within. It becomes fully achieved when the Ātman

is realized. The Upaniṣad summons man to this realization so that

he may experience true life before his body falls away. But if he

neglects it and misses it in this life, great shall be his loss. What

other gain by way of wealth and power and pleasure in the world.

or the ephemeral delights of heaven, can compensate for this loss? Asks Jesus (Mark, VII. 36-7):

'What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'

The life of the senses is finite and trivial. All exclusively secular education has reference to this finite level of existence. That education is healthy and creative when it leads man to the search for this infinite existence, to the search for the true life; otherwise, it ends in sharpening man's sense appetites and in an endless round of the trivial and the finite, which Vedānta characterizes as the stagnation of saṁsāra. And Vedānta finds the tragedy of life in man's confining himself, through spiritual blindness, to the finite and the trivial, in spite of his being born heir to the vast and infinite.

What must be the dimension of that awareness which lifts man from the finite and the trivial and gives him an insight into the vast and the infinite! This movement from the finite to the infinite is also the movement from the false life to the true; it is also the passing from mortality to immortality. All moral and spiritual life expresses this passion for and movement towards the infinite, the immortal. The human heart is never satisfied with the small, with the finite; it ever seeks the great, the infinite. In the words of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (VII. xxiii. 1):

Yo vai bhūmā tat sukham; na alpe sukham asti; bhūmaiva sukham; bhumātveva vijijñāsitavyam—

Universality of Vision

The transcendence of the limited ego and the liberation of the universal man is what is sought to be achieved by the scientific and moral discipline of detachment. The individual is not destroyed by the practice of detachment, but grows into largeness and fullness. Says J.B.S. Haldane in his Possible Worlds:

'I notice that when I think logically and scientifically or act morally my thoughts and actions cease to be characteristic of myself and are those of any intelligent or moral being in the same position. In fact, I am already identifying my mind with an absolute or unconditioned mind.

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'Only in so far as I do this can I see any probability of my

survival, and the more I do so the less I am interested in my private

affairs and the less desire do I feel for personal immortality.'

It is this growth and development of the human awareness,

which has been nourished earlier by scientific and ethical discipline,

that Vedānta seeks to consummate in the spiritual realization of

universality in this very life. Says Swami Vivekananda in his lec-

ture on 'Practical Vedānta' (Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 331):

'The Vedāntic idea is not the destruction of the individual,

but its real preservation. We cannot prove the individual by any

other means but by referring to the universal, by proving that this

individual is really the universal. If we think of the individual

as separate from everything else in the universe, it cannot stand

a minute. Such a thing never existed.'

Where shall man seek for the Infinite and the Immortal? With-

in himself, say the Upaniṣads; within himself, says also Jesus. The

Infinite is his true nature; that is his true dimension. The Self

of man is eternally pure, awakened, and free, says Vedānta. In

the firm language of the Chāndogya Upanisad (VI. viii. 7):

Sa ya eṣo 'ṇimā, aitad ātmyam idam sarvam, tat satyam sa

ātmā, tat tvam asi—

'Everything in the universe has this subtle (infinite) Reality for

its Self; That is the True; That is the Ātman; and That thou art.'

The Evolutionary Vision

Vedānta views the entire evolutionary process as progres-

sive evolution of structure and form and greater and greater mani-

festation of the infinite Self within. It is evolution of matter and

manifestation of spirit. The first emergence of living organisms is

marked by the appearance of a rudimentary form of aware-

ness. This awareness grows in richness and variety as we move

up the evolutionary ladder. The evolution of the nervous system

discloses a progressive development of awareness in depth and

range, and a consequent increase in the grip of the organism on

its environment.

This awareness achieves a new and significant dimension with

the appearance of man on the evolutionary scene. The field of

awareness of all other organisms is, largely, the external environ-

ment, and, to a small extent, the interior of their bodies as well.

Man alone has awareness of the self along with awareness of the

not-self. Self-awareness, which nature achieved through the evo-

lution of the human organism, is a new dimension of awareness containing tremendous implications both for nature and for man. A rudimentary form of self-awareness enabled the earliest man to establish his dominance over the entire animal kingdom. Neurol-ogists speak of the emergence, in the earliest man, of the faculty of imagination—the power of retaining ideas in the mind and viewing them. This power is absent even in the highest of the sub-human species.

Says the neurologist W. Grey Walter in his book The Living Brain (p. 2):

'Thus the mechanisms of the brain reveal a deep physiological division between man and ape. ... If the title of soul be given to the higher functions in question, it must be admitted that the other animals have only a glimmer of the light that so shines before men. ... The nearest creature to us, the chimpanzee, cannot retain an image long enough to reflect on it, however clever it may be in learning tricks or getting food that is placed beyond its natural reach. Unable to rehearse the possible consequences of different responses to a stimulus, without any faculty of planning, the apes towards independence of environment and eventual control of it. The activity of the animal brain is not checked to allow time for the choice of one among several possible responses, but only for the one reflex or conditioned response to emerge. The monkey's brain is still in thrall to its senses. Sentio ergo sum might be the first reflection of a slightly inebriated ape, as it is often the last of alcoholic man; so near and yet so far apart, even then, are they.

'The brain of lion, tiger, rhinoceros and other powerful animals also lacks the mechanism of imagination, or we should not be here to discuss the matter. They cannot envisage changes in their environment, so they have never sought to alter it in all their efforts to retain lordship of their habitat.'

Man alone achieved this power of imaging ideas; and this power was not in him an isolated phenomenon. Within the increased area of the cortex of the ancestral organ, man evolved a mechanism capable of a series of new processes: observation, memory, comparison, evaluation, selection, and judgement. And, in achieving these, he achieved two things:

Firstly, discovery of the path leading to the processing of raw experience into knowledge, of knowledge into power, and of power into control and manipulation of the environment constituted by the not-self of experience.

Secondly, a faint awareness of the reality of himself as the subject, as the self behind the fleeting images, and the discovery of the road leading inward to the total comprehension of this new dimension of reality, with its increasing liberation of moral and spiritual values in his life and action and behaviour.

Man's steady advance on these two fronts constitutes the story of civilization and culture; it constitutes also the story of the march of evolution at the post-human stage. With the emergence, on the evolutionary scene, of the mind of man, disciplined in the knowledge of the not-self and the self in varying degrees, nature yields, in increasing measure, to one of her own products, the control and manipulation of the evolutionary process.

From Knowledge to Wisdom

In spite of his rudimentary self-knowledge which gave him control over the animal world, the earliest man remained an animal in appetites and behaviour. A little more of this self-knowledge, gained through reflection in the context of social experience, helped to increase his control over himself and to humanize him. This process, ever in operation in human civilizations and socio-political organizations, has led up to the man in the modern age, with his almost total control over the not-self environment through an efficient technology, with his global sweep in socio-cultural interests and contacts, and with his yearning for the universal and human. Yet the disparity between his control over himself and his control over external nature, between his moral efficiency and his technical efficiency, confronts him with the most serious problem that his evolution has so far posed. This is thwarting the realization of his heart's yearning for the universal and human. Neglected and unsolved, this problem may make him the only possible destroyer of his civilization and of the fruits of evolution as well. In the meantime, he is destined to move from one tension to another, from one sorrow to another. The only solution lies in the deepening of his moral and spiritual awareness. Biological evolution achieved a measure of this in the life of the earliest man in his rudimentary knowledge of his own self. Social evolution, guided by human intelligence, advanced this still further; a physical and organic self separate from all others gave place to a social self, morally related to an increasing number of other individuals. The dynamism of human evolution demands that this education of man must continue till he rises from self-centredness to self-transcendence.

ence and from knowledge to wisdom. Says Bertrand Russell (The

Impact of Science on Society, pp. 120-21):

'We are in the middle of a race between human skill as to

means and human folly as to ends. Given sufficient folly as to

ends, every increase in the skill required to achieve them is to

the bad. The human race has survived hitherto owing to ignorance

and incompetence; but, given knowledge and competence combined

with folly, there can be no certainty of survival. Knowledge is

power, but it is power for evil just as much as for good. It follows

that, unless men increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge, in-

crease of knowledge will be increase of sorrow.'

The Spiritual Training of the Will

This increase in wisdom is what man achieves when he trans-

cends his little separate self, when he moves in the direction of his

true Self which is also the Self of all, the path to this lies through

increasing control of the senses and the mind, and through discri-

mination between the real and the unreal, between the changeless

One and the changing many. This is the highest education for

man, according to the Upaniṣads; it is the education for him in

what the Mundaka Upaniṣad (I.i.5) terms parā vidyā, the highest

knowledge. wisdom, the realization of the imperishable One in the

perishable many.

This education should not be postponed, say the Upaniṣads; it

should not be lett to be accomplished by nature's slow evolutionary

process. Nature accomplished the first stage of this education, as

I said, in the rudimentary self-knowledge imparted to early man.

She thus put him, among all her products, on the road to full self-

knowledge and self-fulfilment. Modern man does not stand in need

of mother Nature's care to the same extent as early man did or

the animal world still does. He has the intelligence and capacity to

control the processes of nature and society, and to use these to

ensure human fulfilment everywhere. But his will is perverse;

it seeks the ways of folly; it is his enemy; and it will remain his

enemy so long as it is in thralldom to his animal nature and to the

little ego centered in that nature. It has to be turned in the direc-

tion of his divine nature within; then alone will his intelligence

and will and feeling fuse into a new value to emerge as buddhi, wis-

dom. This is the sāttvik will, luminous and pure, according to the

Gītā (XVIII. 33):

Dhṛtyā yayā dhārayate manahprānendriyakriyāh;

Yogenāvyabhicāriṇyā dhṛtiḥ sā pārthā sāttvikī

240 THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

'The will that controls the functions of the mind, the vital energies, and the sense-organs, and turns their energies uniformly in the direction of the divine Self within, that will, O Pārtha, is the sāttvik will.'

The Direction of Human Evolution

Since this subject of the growth of man and his fulfilment is a common theme in Vedānta and in modern biological thought, I can do no better than quote a significant passage from Swami Vivekananda; though rather long, it is worth quoting in full in view of its relevance. In a lecture on 'The Powers of the Mind' delivered in California in 1900, the Swami said (Complete Works, Vol. II, pp. 18-19):

'I shall tell you a theory which I will not argue now, but simply place before you the conclusion. Each man in his childhood runs through the stages through which his race has come up; only the race took thousands of years to do it, while the child takes a few years. The child is first the old savage man—and he crushes a butterfly under his feet. The child is at first like the primitive ancestors of his race. As he grows, he passes through different stages until he reaches the development of his race. Only he does it swiftly and quickly. Now, take the whole of humanity as a race, or take the whole of the animal creation, man and the lower animals, as one whole. There is an end towards which the whole is moving. Let us call it perfection. Some men and women are born who anticipate the whole progress of mankind. Instead of waiting and being reborn over and over again for ages until the whole human race has attained to that perfection, they, as it were, rush through them in a few short years of their life. And we know that we can hasten these processes, if we be true to ourselves. If a number of men, without any culture, be left to live upon an island, and are given barely enough food, clothing, and shelter, they will gradually go on and on, evolving higher and higher stages of civilization. We know also that this growth can be hastened by additional means. We help the growth of trees, do we not? Left to nature they would have grown, only they would have taken a longer time; we help them to grow in a shorter time than they would otherwise have taken. We are doing all the time the same thing, hastening the growth of things by artificial means. Why cannot we hasten the growth of man? We can do that as a race. Why are teachers sent to other countries? Because by these means we can hasten the growth of races. Now, can we not hasten the growth of individuals? We can. Can we put a limit to the hastening? ... You have no reason to say that this much a man can do and no more. Circumstances can hasten him wonderfully. Can there be any limit then till you come to perfection?'

KENA UPANIṢAD—4

241

Referring to the corollary of this line of thought, he continued:

'So, what comes of it?—That a perfect man, that is to say, the

type that is to come of this race, perhaps millions of years hence,

that man can come today. And this is what the Yogis say, that

all great incarnations and prophets are such men; that they reach-

ed perfection in this one life. We have had such men at all periods

of the world's history and at all times.'

And referring to his own master, Sri Ramakrishna, as an ex-

ample of this achievement in our own age, he said:

'Quite recently, there was such a man who lived the life of

the whole human race and reached the end—even in this life.'

And pleading for a scientific study of this spiritual growth of

man so as to deepen the sciences of anthropology and sociology, he

said:

'Even this hastening of the growth must be under laws. Sup-

pose we can investigate these laws and understand their secrets and

apply them to our own needs, it follows that we grow. We hasten

our growth, we hasten our development, and we become perfect,

even in this life. This is the higher part of our life, and the science

of the study of mind and its powers has this perfection as its real

end. Helping others with money and other material things, and

teaching them how to go on smoothly in their daily life, are mere

details.'

And adverting to the utility and urgency of this science of

spirituality, and presenting the Vedāntic view of the uniqueness

of man, he concluded:

'The utility of this science is to bring out the perfect man, and

not let him wait and wait for ages, just a plaything in the hands

of the physical world, like a log of drift-wood carried from wave

to wave and tossing about in the ocean. This science wants you

to be strong, to take the work in your own hands, instead of leav-

ing it in the hands of Nature, and get beyond this little life. That

is the great idea.'

The Dynamics of Human Evolution

This is the direction of human evolution according to Vedānta.

The dynamics of evolution at the human stage finds its true expres-

sion in the struggle to liberate the universal man imbedded in the

individual man. Bereft of this spiritual direction, every human

action and struggle serves but to throw him deeper and deeper into

the net of the delusion of his finitude, sharpen his animal appetites,

and increase his tension and sorrow. In Vedānta such a life is

termed a life of saṁsāra, worldliness. It is a static life, in spite of

M.U.—16.

all the stir and movement which it may exhibit. As a stagnant

pool is to a sheet of flowing water, so stands this static life of

samsāra in relation to the dynamic life of spirituality.

Such a spiritual life is unworldly, but it is not outside the

world. Live in samsāra, says Sri Ramakrishna, but allow not

samsāra to get into you; a 'boat should be in water, but water

should not be in the boat. Samsāra itself becomes the field of

struggle, the Kurukṣetra, for this transcendence of the ego, for this

achievement by man of universal awareness, of brahmajñāna, says

this great verse of the Kena Upaniṣad: iha cedavedīt atha satya-

masti-'If man realizes It here, then is there true life for him.'

The Uniqueness of Man

It is not only his true life but it is also the highest human

excellence and the acme of his life fulfilment. Vedānta further

adds that it is also the birthright of every human being and the

crown of the entire evolutionary process. Says the Śrīmad-Bhāga-

vatam (XI. ix. 28):

Srṣṭvā purāṇi vividhānyajayātmāśaktyā

vṛkṣān sariṣrpapaśūn khagadamśa matsyān;

Taistairatuṣṭahrdayo 'manujaṁ vidhāya

brahmāvalokadhiṣaṇaṁ mudamāpa devaḥ—

This is how Vedanta speaks of the uniqueness of man; it is

quite different from the modern scientist's view of man's unique-

ness, such as is expounded in a book like The Uniqueness of Man

by Sir Julian Huxley. There Huxley says (p. 27):

'Those of man's unique characteristics which may better be

called psychological and social than narrowly biological spring from

one or other of three characteristics. The first is his capacity for

abstract and general thought: the second is the relative unification

of his mental processes, as against the much more rigid compart-

mentalization of animal mind and behaviour: the third is the exist-

ence of social units, such as tribe, nation, party, and church, with

a continuity of their own, based on organized tradition and culture.'

He says further (ibid., p. 29):

KENA UPANIṢAD–4

‘The trouble, indeed, is to find any human activities which are not unique. Even the fundamental biological attributes such as eating, sleeping, and mating have been tricked out by man with all kinds of unique frills and peculiarities.’

These are, undoubtedly, unique characteristics. But they belong, says Vedānta, to a field of experience, namely, sense experience, which he shares with the animals. Even his advanced thought is sense-bound. Huxley is aware of higher dimensions revealed by the manifestations of man’s extra-sensory faculties, for he drops the following hint (ibid., p. 31):

‘Man may thus be unique in more ways than he now suspects.’

Huxley is, unfortunately, not aware that man, in countries such as India, outside the sphere of western development, went far beyond this stage of ‘suspicion’ and systematically explored and developed a science of these higher dimensions of his uniqueness.

The Upaniṣads view man both as actor in and spectator of the drama of existence. He transcends himself in the act of knowing himself. His supreme uniqueness lies in his passion for truth and in his ability to realize it. He alone can solve the mystery of existence by transcending himself. He alone has the ego sense; and it is the supreme mark of his intelligence and courage that he treats this mysterious value within himself, fugitive in itself but suggestive of a hidden depth, not as a final conclusion but as an initial datum, as a starting point for a penetrating investigation into the mystery of its hidden depth; and he then discovers the Ātman, the infinite and immortal Self, as his true nature, and as the true nature of all beings.

This is the uniqueness of man, the uniqueness of his intelligence, that the Upaniṣads and the Indian spiritual tradition proclaim. Sings the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam in words spoken by Krṣṇa, the God-man, to man, the spiritual seeker (XI. xxix. 22):

Eṣā buddhimatāṁ buddhīḥ maniṣā ca maniṣiṇām;

Yat satyam anṛteneha martyenāpnoti māṁ ṛtam—

‘This is the intelligence of the intelligent and the wisdom of the wise—that they attain Me (God), the True and the Immortal, by means of the unreal and the mortal (the body and the ego).’

Vedānta, however, considers the two dimensions of human excellence upheld by the Upaniṣads and modern science as complementary and not contradictory.

This is clearly stated in the following similar verses which are also from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (XI. vii. 19-21):

Prāyeṇa manujā loke lokatattvavicakṣaṇāḥ; Samuddharanti hyātmānam ātmanāiva aśubhāśayāt—

'In the world, men are generally efficient in the investigation of the truth of nature; (and through that) they uplift themselves by themselves from all sources of evil.'

Ātmano gururātmaiva puruṣasya viśeṣataḥ; Yat pratyakṣānumānābhyāṁ śreyo 'sau anuvindate—

'For a human being, particularly, his guru or guide is, verily, his own self; because he achieves his welfare through the help of direct sense experience, and through inference based on it.'

Puruṣatve ca nāṁ dhīrāḥ sāṁkhyayogaviśāradāḥ; Āvistarāṁ prapaśyanti sarvasaktyupabṛṁhitam—

'Wise men who have mastered the science and art of the spiritual life realize clearly, within the human personality itself, Me (the universal Self of all), the unlimited source of all the (limited psycho-physical) energies (of the individual).'

Vedānta considers that since man shares his sensuality with the animals, his distinctive uniqueness is spirituality only. The urge to this spirituality alone makes him truly himself. And so Vedānta would ever strive, out of compassion for man, to stimulate this urge in him. To quote the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam again to get a touch of the Vedāntic concern for man's spiritual growth (XI. ix. 29):

Labdhvā sudurlabham idaṁ bahusaṁbhavānte manuṣyam arthadam anityamapiha dhīraḥ; Tūrṇaṁ yateta na patet anumṛtyu yāvat nihśreyasāya viṣayaḥ khalu sarvataḥ syāt—

'Having obtained, at the end of many births, this human form which is difficult to obtain, and, though perishable, capable of conferring on man, in this very life, the highest spiritual freedom, the wise man should strive earnestly, before death overtakes him, for spiritual freedom which is his highest excellence. Sensual delights can be had in all other bodies; (hence the human body need not be dedicated to them).'

KENA UPANISAD-4

245

The Place of the Ego in the Strategy of Evolution

Modern physical and biological knowledge reveals to us the grand design of linkages in nature. Things and events are inter-linked; nothing is absolutely separate and self-sufficient. In the context of this grand design of nature, belief in a separate self-sufficient ego becomes a delusion. And modern biology, along with Vedānta and Buddhism and all higher spiritual thought, proclaim this truth of the insufficiency of the ego. In the voluminous digest of modern biological knowledge entitled The Science of Life, produced by H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and G. P. Wells, the authors have discussed in a moving passage this subject of man's ego (pp. 1368-69):

'Alone, in the silence of the night and on a score of thoughtful occasions we have demanded, can this self, so vividly central to my universe, so greedily possessive of the world, ever cease to be? Without it surely there is no world at all! And yet this conscious self dies nightly when we sleep, and we cannot trace the stages by which in its beginnings it crept to an awareness of its own existence. ...

'Personality may only be one of Nature's methods, a convenient provisional delusion of considerable strategic value.'

And further (p. 1497):

'The more intelligent and comprehensive man's picture of the universe has become, the more intolerable has become his concentration upon the individual life with its inevitable final rejection.'

Again, referring to man's ethical and spiritual capacity for identification with and participation in a greater reality, the authors conclude (p. 1497):

'He escapes from his ego by this merger and acquires an impersonal immortality in the association; his identity dissolving into the greater identity. This is the essence of much religious mysticism, and it is remarkable how closely the biological analysis of individuality brings us to the mystics. The individual, according to this second line of thought, saves himself by losing himself. But in the mystical teaching he loses himself in the Deity, and in the scientific interpretation of life he forgets himself as Tom, Dick, or Harry, and discovers himself as Man. The Buddhist treatment of the same necessity is to teach that the individual life is a painful delusion from which men escape by conquest of individual desire. Western Mystic and Eastern Sage find a strong effect of endorsement in modern science and the everyday teaching of practical morality. Both teach that self must be subordinated, that self is a method and not an end.'

246 THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

This is familiar language to students of the Upaniṣads and Buddhism. The subject of the unreality of the ego is the theme of the second discourse delivered by Buddha to his disciples at Sārnāth (Vārāṇāsi) 2,500 years ago. Stripping the notion of individuality of all its unreal elements, Buddha says (Vinaya Piṭaka, Mahāvagga, Khandhaka, I. vi):

'Rūpam (material form) is an-attā (not the Self); vedana (sensation) is an-attā....; saññā (perception) is an-attā....; samkhārā (pre-disposition) is an-attā ...; viññānam (consciousness) is an-attā.'

Then follows a dialogue between Buddha and his disciples. Stripping the Self of all its unreal elements, Buddha said:

'Again what think you, Bhikkhus? Is the material form permanent (niccam) or impermanent (a-niccam)?'

'Impermanent, revered Sir.'

'But that which is impermanent, is that suffering (dukkam) or happiness (sukham)?'

'Suffering, revered Sir.'

'That, then, which is impermanent, suffering, and by nature changeable (vi-parināma dhammam), is it proper to regard it thus: This is mine, I am this, this is my Self (etam mama, eso'ham asmi, eso me attā)?'

'No indeed, revered Sir.'

'Is sensation permanent? ... Is perception permanent? Is predisposition permanent? ... That, then, which is impermanent, suffering, and by nature changeable, is it proper to regard it thus: This is mine, I am this, this is my Self?'

'No indeed, revered Sir.'

'And so, Bhikkhus, all material form, whether past, future, or present, whether within us or external, whether gross or subtle, low or high, far or near, is to be regarded with right insight, as it really is (yathā bhūtam), thus: This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my Self ... All sensation ... gross or subtle. all perception ... gross or subtle, ... all predisposition ... low or high. ... all consciousness ... far or near, is to be regarded with right insight, as it really is, thus: This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my Self.

'Regarding them thus, O Bhikkhus, an instructed Āryan (noble) disciple becomes indifferent to (nibbindati) material form, becomes indifferent to sensation, becomes indifferent to perception, becomes indifferent to consciousness. Becoming indifferent, he becomes free from desire (vi-rājati); through non-desire (vi-rāga) he is liberated.'

KENA UPANIṢAD ··1

217

This is the teaching of Buddha on the subject, and it is

also the teaching of the Upaniṣads. And today the authors of

The Science of Life tell us that the given personality of man, cent-

red round his ego, is but an assemblage of constantly vanishing

elements and cannot be his true self. It is, at best, as they said,

'one of nature's methods, a convenient provisional delusion of

considerable strategic value'. And it needs to be transcended. With

this hint, the science of biology withdraws from the scene, leaving

the field to the science of spirituality.

To the question: 'When shall I be free?' Sri Ramakrishna

gave the significant answer: 'When I shall cease to be.'

The only transcendence of the ego which biological science

can place before man for his acceptance is either his total mergence

in the species, yielding an experience of a biological or genetic im-

mortality, or his achievement of a sort of cosmopolitan awareness

through a humanistic education by which he will learn to forget

himself as 'Tom, Dick, or Harry and discover himself as Man.'

The philosophical insufficiency of this theory of mergence in

nature, the prakṛtilaya conception of Indian thought, has been dis-

cussed and demonstrated by Saṅkara and other Indian thinkers.

They have also pointed out the pitfall of the fallacy of total nihil-

ism bordered on by any philosophy which upholds the unreality

of the ego. Modern biological and psychological analysis must go

deeper in the search for man's sense of individuality in order to

avert this dangerous fallacy and discover his true dimension in

the universal Self. Neither his eternal sleep in nature nor his red-

uction into a soulless nothingness, nor even the achievement of a

cosmopolitan humanism, can satisfy man's rational urges or spir-

itual hungers. The limited ego may not be the final truth; but it is a

significant first datum; for it is the promise of something unlimited

and eternal. Hence the aptness of the statement that it is 'a con-

venient provisional delusion of considerable strategic value'. In

what sense is it strategic?

A baby, till its birth, is part of the mother's body. At birth

it becomes a new organism with a separate existence of its own.

The first step in the education of the baby is the development

of its ego sense, its sense of individuality. The new-born child

considers itself as one of the items of the world around it. The

education it receives after birth is designed to give it an awareness

of its own personality, of its own uniqueness among the objects

around it, of its being a subject and not an object. This rudimentary subjective awareness of the baby develops, as it grows in its

powers and capacities, through the handling of objects and entities and persons around it. The education given to the child is meant

to strengthen his eg^ sense; he draws to himself the energies and influences around him and grows into a distinct individual, an

identifiable person.

This is the first phase of the ego's strategic value; almost simultaneously begins the second phase when, first, under external

influences and, later, under his own conscious efforts, the child becomes aware of his close relationship not only with things and

objects but also with other subjects like himself and learns to treat them as subjects, as he would himself like to be treated by them.

This is social ethics, the recognition of the subject in a social object, which sees the emergence of a moral personality in the child, in

which the idea of a totally separate individuality gives place to a personality with ever-widening frontiers within the milieu of the

psychic world of society around him. The old limited individuality is transcended giving place to an expansive individuality and an

expansive awareness and love; through this process Nature's strategy, now expressed through the human personality itself, grows

and finds its consummation in the spiritual realization of the Universal, the Brahman, as Vedānta calls it, the eternal, pure, en-

lightened Self of all. And this strategy and its final issue in the realization of this universal Self forms the grand theme of verse

five of chapter two of the Kena Upaniṣad which we have been discussing so long:

Iha cedavedīt atha satyamasti na cedihāvedīt mahatī vinaṣṭiḥ;

Bhūteṣu bhūteṣu vicitya dhīrāṅ pretyāsmāl lokāt amṛtā bhavanti.

The True Life for Man

Its realization here and now, iha, is the consummation of man's education, says the verse. That is the true life for man; life at the

level of the ego is only a shadow life. If man gets stuck at this level, if he fails to treat it merely as 'a convenient provisional

delusion of considerable strategic value', and refuses to march onward to capture the sunlit heights of his true individuality, it will

be to his great loss, mahatī vinaṣṭiḥ. What can be a greater loss

for man than to be condemned to live in a phantom shadow world

when just behind him is the true world of light and life, of which

he is the heir? What can be a greater loss for him than to be

a chained prisoner in a dark cave, handling all the time shadows

thrown on the wall in front by the light behind, as depicted in

Plato's famous allegory? No, that shall not be, says the verse

There is the touch of concern and compassion for man in the

temper and tone of this verse. The Upaniṣad is deeply concerned

to help man to find his true life, life lived in the light of truth. And

what is that truth?

Bhūteṣu bhūteṣu vicitya dhīrāḥ

pretyāsmat lokāt amṛtā bhavanti.

Realizing the universal Self as his true nature, of which his

own ego was but a projecting tip he recognizes his oneness with

every being; by this he becomes dhīra, the wise one, one who has

achieved the highest elevation of spirit; and by this rising above

the given world of the ego and the senses, the world which is

subject to change and mortality; by thus using it not as the final

goal but only as a strategic base. he achieves immortality—amṛtā

bhavanti: he achieves true life in which the shadows of death

weave no patterns. unlike the false life of the ego which is but

the darkness of spiritual blindness and also of death, hazily lit up

with a trace of the light of the eternal Self. This answers Bert-

rand Russell's demand, in the passage quoted earlier, for knowl-

edge growing into wisdom: 'Unless men increase in wisdom as much

as in knowledge, increase of knowledge will be increase of sorrow.'

Immortality

By rising above this transient world of sense experience and

the ego, man becomes immortal. says the verse. What is the nature

of this immortality? Biology speaks of genetic immortality; indi-

vidual organisms die; but the species continue to exist through the

genes. Psychology today hints at the possibility of the immortality

of the soul in the sense of survival after death. Several theologies

hold to the idea of immortality as continuity of the soul in higher

spheres after death. Vedānta alone speaks of an immortality

which is realized in this very life; this is possible because freedom

is the nature of man. Whatever is conditioned is mortal; to be

conditioned is to be bound by space, time, and cause; to be un-

conditioned is to be free from all these bonds. Whatever, there-

fore, is free, in the sense of being unconditioned, is immortal. The

body and the ego, as much as the things of nature around, are all conditioned and mortal. The Ātman alone is unconditioned, free, and therefore immortal. This Ātman is the true nature of man. Man is essentially the nitya-śuddha-buddha-mukta-svabhāva paramātman—the eternally pure, awakened, and free Self, says Vedānta and adds that, this realization is the goal of human life. The sages of the Upaniṣads achieved this realization and communicated it to humanity for the first time. Says the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (VI. 14):

Yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā ye'sya hṛdi sthitāḥ; Atha mortyo amṛto bhavati atra brahma samaśnute—

After attaining enlightenment, Buddha gave expression to the content of that enlightenment in the remark that the Immortal had been gained by him. The message of all spiritual religions is this message of the Immortal. Vedānta adds that it is to be realized here and now, as this Kena Upaniṣad verse puts it: iha cedavedīt atha satyamasti, and by realizing which man transcends this transient world of sense experience and realizes immortality: pretyāsmāt lokāt amṛtā bhavanti.

Commenting on this line, Śaṅkara says:

Pretya, vyāvrtya; mamāham̉bhāvalakṣaṇāt avidyārūpāt asmāt lokāt uparama, sarvātmaikyabhāvam advaitam āpanāḥ santo, amṛtā bhavanti; brahmaiva bhavanti, ityarthah—

Brahman is the life and soul of the universe. The rest of this Upaniṣad will expound this basic truth of Vedānta through a beautiful allegory which we shall study in the next lecture.

ELEVEN

KENA UPANISAD-5

In the last lecture the Kena Upaniṣad gave us the profound message of Indian philosophical thought that truth is not a matter of mere belief or intellectual formulation, but that it is something to be realized by each individual. This is what converts the philosophical urge into a spiritual passion. A man's life will not become fruitful until he realizes the mystery that is within life itself. This idea of realizing truth runs through all Indian religious literature. Religion is a matter of realization. Life grows; and this growth is mental as well as physical. In the higher reaches of mental growth and development, life experiences the glow of truth playing about itself; and at the summit of that development, truth pervades and penetrates life through and through. This fact was communicated to us by the Kena Upaniṣad in the famous verse which we studied in the last lecture, the last verse of the second chapter:

Iha cedavedit atha satyamasti

na cet iha avedit mahatī vinaṣṭīh;

Bhūteṣu bhūteṣu vicitya dhīrāḥ

pretyāsmāl lokāt amṛtā bhavanti—

'For one who realizes It here (in this world) there is true life. For one who does not so realize It, great is the loss. Discovering the Ātman in every single being, the wise ones, dying to this world (of sense-experience), become immortal.'

The Kena Upaniṣad, in its opening verses, had begun with the statement that the body, the senses, the mind, and the ego are not self-sufficient entities but that they point to a supreme Reality beyond and above them—Brahman, the Universal Self of all—by whose energy they all live and function. By themselves, each one of them is but a zero, in the words of Sri Ramakrishna, and the zero becomes significant only when the figure 1 is placed behind it. The reality of this One behind the many was expounded to us by several subsequent verses of this Upaniṣad. The Upaniṣad also enlightened us with the truth that this One is a spiritual reality, being the innermost Self of all, and that Its realization connotes the achievement of universality of vision and sympathy. This is the true Self of man. But in his state of ignorance, he mistakes the senses, the mind, the intellect, or the ego for his Self. This

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

false notion, with its attendant evils, vanishes with the dawn of

true knowledge.

A Fascinating Story

This fundamental Vedāntic idea is now sought to be amplified

by means of a fascinating story in the last two chapters of the

Upaniṣad—chapters three and four. The third chapter opens with

a reference to a mythical battle between the forces of evil and the

forces of good, between the forces of darkness and the forces of

light—the asuras and the devas:

Brahma ha devebhyo vijigye;

tasya ha brahmaṇo vijaye devā anahīyanta;

Ta aikpanta: asmākamevāyaṁ vijayo

asmākamevāyaṁ mahimeti—

'The story goes that Brahman obtained a victory for the devas;

though the victory was due to Brahman, the devas became elated

by it and thought: this victory is due to us only; this glory be-

longs to us only.'

The devas, or gods, represent the forces of light, and the asuras,

or demons, represent the forces of darkness, in Indian mythology;

they are eternal enemies. When the forces of light are pressed

hard by their enemies, Brahman, the Light of all lights, intervenes

to ensure the victory of light over darkness, the victory of the

spiritual man over the sensuous man.

Earlier, when studying the Īśā Upaniṣad, we learned in its verse

three that he who neglects Self-knowledge, and pursues only ex-

ternal things, falls into the dark world of the asuras, the world of

ignorance and delusion. Though representing the forces of light, the

devas also are not free from the clutches of ignorance and delusion.

They take their separate egos to be their real Self; but this de-

lusion lies less thick on them than on the asuras and so it can

be lifted by a little spiritual help from outside. Among the

gods, the more prominent ones, namely, Agni, Vāyu, and Indra,

who were the leaders, felt the vanity of victory most. Comments

Śaṅkara on this verse (III. 1):

Tat ātmasamsthasya pratyagātmanaḥ iśvarasya sarvajñāsya

sarvakriyāphalasamyojayituḥ prānināṁ sarvaśakteḥ jagataḥ sthi-

tiṁ cikīrṣoḥ ayaṁ jayo mahimā ca ityajānantāḥ te devā aikṣanta,

ikṣitavanto, agnyādisvarūpaparicchinnātmakrto, asmākamevāyaṁ

vijayo asmākamevāyaṁ mahimā, aghyāyavindataṁdi lakṣaṇo jaya-

phalabūito asmābhiranubhūyate, na asmatpratyagātmabhūta īśvarakṛta iti—

Man, in spite of his obvious limitations, thinks too much of his strength and glory; but all this ends in death. If only he knew the One, the source of all strength, glory, and excellence in men and nature, how blessed his life would be, and how fearless of death he would become! Life is trivial if it does not overcome death in the knowledge of the deathless Self, the one Self in all.

This is echoed by Shakespeare in his Measure for Measure (II. ii. 119-24):

But man, proud man, Dress'd in a little brief authority— Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence—like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep.

In moments of deep thoughtfulness, man feels within himself the presence of a power greater than his given self. He then learns to feel humility and to experience an elevation of spirit in that humility. His 'unripe' ego becomes the 'ripe' ego, in the words of Sri Ramakrishna; 'I, and yet not I, but the Christ that liveth in me' in the significant utterance of St. Paul. Man then ceases from his erstwhile habit of stealing the glory that belongs to God alone; he experiences the truth of the holy utterance: Gloria in excelsis.

Man's passage from spiritual blindness to illumination, and the concern of God, who is the inner Self of all, to illumine the heart of man, form the theme of the eleven verses that follow, beginning with verse two to the end of this chapter, chapter three:

Taddhaiṣāṁ vijajñau; tebhyo ha prādurbabhūva; Tat na vyajānata kimīdṁ yakṣam iti—

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

'Brahman came to know this (their vanity); He verily appeared

before them. But they did not understand who that yakṣa (ador-

able Spirit) was.'

The three gods were puzzled and inwardly afraid; they desired

keenly to know who was the yakṣa confronting them. So they

decided to depute one from among themselves to interview Him;

they chose Agni for the mission:

Te'gnimabhuvaṅ, jātavedā, etat vijānīhi kimetat yakṣamiti.

Tatheti—

'They addressed Agni: "O Jātavedā, please find out who this yakṣa

is." "Yes," said Agni."

So saying, he proceeded on his mission.

Tadabhyādravat, tadabhyāvadat ko'sīti, agnirvā ahāmasmi iti—

'He (Agni) hastened (to the yakṣa). (The yakṣa) asked him who

he was; (Agni) replied: "I am, verily, Agni; I am also known as

Jātavedā (near omniscient)"'.

The undue stress on the 'unripe' ego is evident in the tone

and content of Agni's answer. He not merely gave his name but,

in order to impress the visitor with the extraordinary nature of

his personality, he also mentioned his title—Jātavedā—by which

he was well known in the world.

The yakṣa does not seem to have been much impressed judg-

ing from his next question:

Tasmiṅ tvayi kiṁ vīryaṁ iti. Api idaṁ sarvam daheyāṁ

yadidaṁ pṛthivyām iti—

""What energy do you possess—you of such fame?"" (asked the

Yakṣa). "I can burn everything, whatever there is on this earth,"

'replied Agni).'

Tasmai truṇaṁ nidadhau, etat daheti. Tadupapreyāya sarvajav-

ena; tanna śaśāka dagdhum. Sa tata eva nivavṛte, naitadasakam

vijñātum yadetat yakṣam iti—

'The yakṣa placed a straw before him (and said): "Burn this!"

(Agni) approached it with all speed; he was, however, unable to

burn it. So he withdrew from there (and returned to the gods),

saying, "I could not ascertain who the yakṣa was.""

Agni was crestfallen. The gods, however, decided to continue

the investigation of the strange phenomenon:

Atha vāyum abruvan, vāyava etat vijānīhi kim etat yakṣamiti. Tatheti—

Tat abhyadravat. Tam abhyavadat ko'si iti. Vāyur vā aham asmi ityabravīt: mātariśvā vā aham asmi iti—

Vāyu did not lag behind Agni in self-esteem and self-importance. The yakṣa, however, was equally unimpressed by his tall claim:

Tasmin tvayi kim vīryam iti. Api idam sarvam ādīya yadi-dam prthivyām iti—

Tasmai trṇam nidadhau, etat ādatsveti. Tadupapreyāya sarvavajena, tanna śaśāka ādātum. Sa tata eva nivavṛte, naitadasakam vijñātum yadetat yakṣamiti—

The gods now decided to ask their leader, Indra, to solve the mystery:

Athendram abruvan, maghavan etat vijānīhi kimetat yakṣamiti. Tatheti; tat abhyadravat. Tasmāt tirodadhe—

Indra was baffled. But his perplexity turned into amazement a moment later, as the next and last verse, verse twelve, of this chapter tells us:

Sa tasmin eva īkāśe striyam ājagāma bahuśobhamānām umām haimavatīm. Tām hovāca, kim etat yakṣamiti—

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

'And in that very spot he (Indra) beheld a woman, the wondrously effulgent Umā, the daughter of the snow-clad mountain, Himavat. And of her he asked, "Who could this yakṣa be?"

The Grace of knowledge

The three gods were defeated in their common mission; of them, Indra had not even the privilege of conversing with the yakṣa as Agni and Vāyu had. But all three had a spiritual catharsis through this experience; their self-esteem and sense of egoistic self-sufficiency received a jolt. In this they became the recipients of the grace of the one living God who dwells in the hearts of all beings as the Self of their selves. Śaṅkara's comment on verse 2 explains the motive that prompted Brahman to appear before the devas in the wondrous form of the yakṣa:

Sarvekṣitṛ hi tat sarvabhūtakaraṇaprayoktrtvāt devānām ca mithyājñānānam upalabhyā maiva asuravat devā mithyābhimānāt parabhaveyuḥ iti; tadanukampayā, devān mithyābhimānāpano- danena anyagrhṇīyām iti, tebhyo devebhyo ha kila arthāya prādur- babhūva, svayogamāhātmyanirmitena atyadbhutena vismāpanīyena rūpeṇa, devānām indriyagocare prādurbhūva—

At the approach of Indra the yakṣa vanished; Indra was baffled; he was exercising his mind to ascertain who the yakṣa was. He was experiencing what in mysticism is called 'the dark night of the soul'. Unlike the other two gods, however, Indra did not accept defeat and withdraw. He persisted in his search for knowledge of Indra, spiritual truth in the heart of Indra, Knowledge itself appeared before Indra in the form of the goddess Umā with a view to blessing him. ' Umā is described as bahuśobhamānā, extraordinarily effulgent. Comments Śaṅkara on this term (III. 12):

Sarveṣām hi śobhamānānām śobhanatamā vidyā, tadā bahuśo- bhamānā iti viśeṣaṇam upapannam bhavati—

'Vidyā, spiritual knowledge, is the most luminous among all luminous things; it is thus only that the qualification bahuśobhamānā, extraordinarily effulgent, becomes appropriate.'

This spiritual knowledge, personified as Umā Haimavatī, now instructs Indra in the eternal truth behind all that is perishable, men and things; and this forms the theme of the following first six verses of the fourth and last chapter of this Upaniṣad:

Sā brahmeti hovāca. Brahmano vā etat vijaye mahīyadhvamiti. Tato haiva vidāṁcakāra brahmeti—

Indra saw Brahman and realized the truth of Brahman through the grace of spiritual Knowledge in the form of Umā. The other two gods, Agni and Vāyu, also saw Brahman in the form of the yakṣa, and also conversed with Him, but they could not recognize who He was. This they did later through their leader Indra:

Tasmāt vā ete devā āttārām iva anyān devān, yad agnivāyurindraḥ; te hyenat nediṣṭhaṁ pasparśuh; te hyenat prathamo vidāṁ-cakāra brahmeti—

Tasmāt vā indro atitarām iva anyān devān; sa hyenat nediṣṭhaṁ pasparśa; sa hyenat prathamo vidāṁcakāra brahmeti

Unity of Microcosm and Macrocosm

Indian thought conceived an intimate unity between the macrocosm of nature and the microcosm of the human body, between the ādhibhautika and the ādhyātmika aspects of nature; the latter is an epitome of the former. The gods thus represent not only the forces of external nature mythically conceived, but also the sensory and thought forces within the body of man. The story in its ādhyātmika significance is an allegorical presentation of the journey of man to God, his own innermost Self. Indra, Agni, and Vāyu are personifications of the forces of nature. These forces, though appearing separate and self-sufficient, are yet only different

M.U.—17.

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

forms of one single cosmic force. Within the human body, Agni represents the power of speech, Vāyu represents the power of thought, and Indra stands for the Jīva or the individual soul.

The life of every man is a battle-ground between the forces of good and evil, between the forces of light and darkness. The former tend to freedom of the soul, and the latter to its bondage. To the question 'What is life?' asked by the Mahārājā of Khetri, Swami Vivekananda gave a significant answer (The Life of Swami Vivekananda, By His Eastern and Western Disciples, Fourth Edition, p. 220):

'Life is the unfoldment and development of a being under circumstances tending to press it down.'

This unfoldment, at the human level, is a spiritual unfoldment, which is thwarted by the predominance of man's animal nature, the darkness of non-awareness. Man is man so long as he struggles to overcome this nature and reach out from darkness to light. This struggle between his lower and higher natures is mythically presented in the Upaniṣad as a war between devas and asuras, and projected to cosmic dimensions. This is an important theme of a vast branch of Indian religious literature, namely, the Purāṇas. Knowledge of Brahman came to the devas only after they had achieved victory over the asuras. This emphasizes the truth that the edifice of spiritual effort and realization can be raised only on moral foundations. Moral life is itself the first manifestation of spiritual life.

The success of the devas over the asuras was due not to the devas themselves as separate limited cosmic forces, but to the one cosmic divine Force, Brahman, which informs and sustains them all. Without the power of Brahman, they are but empty shells. The gods in the story realized their emptiness and limitedness as individual separate entities and their fullness and unlimitedness as Brahman.

Hints and Suggestions

The Upaniṣad in its first and second chapters had told us one of the central truths of the Upaniṣads that speech and thought cannot grasp Brahman. This truth is allegorically explained by this story. Agni, the god of speech, representing all sense-organs, and Vāyu, the god of mind or thought, both failed to ascertain the identity of the yakṣa. Verses four to eight of the first chapter of this Upaniṣad had presented Brahman as that which neither the sense-organs nor the mind can reveal, but which reveals

all the sense-organs and the mind. It is their innermost reality and

the one source of their power. When speech and mind returned ba-

fled, the Jīva, or soul, represented as Indra in the story, took up

the challenge. But the yakṣa vanished from his presence. This

is of great significance; for Jiva and Brahman are not two differ-

ent realities. Brahman is the true nature of the Jīva; but the Jīva

is not aware of this ever-present truth. This awakening comes to

it through the Grace of knowledge when the heart becomes pure;

the transcendence of the ego is the index of this purity. Indra ach-

ieved this through the shock of the disappearance of the yakṣa at his

mere approach. The meekness and humility born of it intensified his

passion for the knowledge of Truth; and the Truth soon dawned on

his pure mind. The words of Jesus: 'Blessed are the pure in heart

for they shall see God' constitute: an eternal spiritual truth. This

dawning of the Grace of knowledge in the pure heart of Indra

is allegorically presented as the vision of the extraordinarily lu-

minous Umā Haimavatī and the instruction he received from Her.

This goddess is the embodiment of all knowledge, and more espe-

cially of the knowledge of God. according to Indian thought: Vid-

yāḥ samastāḥ tava devīr bhēdāḥ—'All types of knowledge, O God-

dess, are different forms of Thee,' sings the Devī Māhātmyam (XI.

6). In the path of bhakti or devotion this truth is represented as

divine Grace through which alone, and not through any effort on

the part of the individual, the highest spiritual realization is

achieved.

Leaving the story aside, the Upanisad now proceeds to indi-

cate the nature of Brahman through hints and suggestions which

are extremly obscure due to brevity:

Tasya viṣa ādeśo yadeta vidyuto vyadyutat ā iti; it nymī-

ṣad ā; ityadhidaivatam—

'This is the teaching regarding That (Brahman): It is like a flash

of lightning; it is like a wink of the eye; this is with reference to

the adhidaivatam (Its aspect as cosmic manifestation).'

The revelation of Brahman in nature is of a momentary char-

acter; man can get only a glimpse of Brahman by contemplating

external nature; for external nature presents to the human mind

mostly the perishable crust of names and forms. In deep mo-

ments of artistic or religious experience this crust is broken, revealing

the beauty of the eternal spiritual truth behind. But these glimpses

are often momentary. This verse compares them to the flash of

lightning or the wink of an eye. Brahman's appearance before the

gods was also like a flash of lightning. The Upaniṣad now pro-

ceeds, in verse five of its fourth chapter, to describe Its manifes-

tation in the inner world:

Atha adhyātmam; yadetat gacchati iva ca mano anena ca etat

upasmarati abhikṣṇam saṅkalpaḥ—

'Now Its description with reference to the adhyātma (Its aspect

as manifested in man); mind proceeds to Brahman in all speed,

as it were; by his (mind) also, this Brahman is remembered and

imagined as always near.'

As verse five of chapter one of this Upaniṣad told us, Brah-

man is not revealed by the mind but by Brahman does the mind

itself reveal objects. Though the mind cannot reveal Brahman,

the mind has a persistent desire to know Brahman; through thought,

memory, and imagination, the mind ever tries to move towards

Brahman though baffled again and again in the attempt. Through

these acts of the mind, Brahman discloses in flashes Its presence

as the innermost Self of man. Earlier, verse four of chapter two

of this Upaniṣad told us:

Pratibodhaviditam matam amṛtatvam hi vindate—'Indeed, he

attains immortality, who realizes It in and through every pulsa-

tion of mind and awareness.' To this Śaṅkara adds his comment:

'And there is no other way to know Brahman.' Brahman is manah-

pratyayasamakālābhivyaktidharmi—'Brahman has the characteristic

of disclosing Itself simultaneously with every pulsation of the mind'.

says Śaṅkara in his comment on the present verse (IV. 5).

The Upaniṣad proceeds now to describe Brahman as the ador-

able One (IV. 6):

Tad ha tadvanam nāma; tadvanamityupāsitavyam. Sa ya etat

evam veda abhi hainam sarvāṇi bhūtāni samvāñcchanti—

'Brahman is well known by the name of Tadvanam; so It is to be

meditated upon as Tadvanam. All beings love him who knows

Brahman as such.'

Śaṅkara explains tadvanam as:

Tasya prāṇijātasya pratyagātmabhūtatvāt vananīyam, sam-

bhajanīyam, atah tadvanam nāma prakhyātam brahma—

'Brahman is well known by the name of Tadvanam because It is

the innermost Self of all beings and therefore the most adorable,

the most worshipful.'

Realization of Brahman as the innermost Self of all beings transforms the individual man into the universal man; he becomes Brahman. Naturally he is then loved by all, just as Brahman is so loved.

Ethical Basis of Spirituality

A dialogue between the student and the teacher now ensues (IV. 7):

Upaniṣadam் bho brūhi iti. Uktā te upaniṣad; brāhmīm vāva te upaniṣadamabrūmeti—

"Sir, teach me the Upaniṣad." "The Upaniṣad has been imparted to you; we have, verily, imparted to you the Upaniṣad relating to Brahman."

The student wants to know whether the whole subject of the knowledge of Brahman has been imparted to him. And the teacher affirms that it has been imparted.

The teacher now imparts to the student knowledge of the moral values which are the indispensable means to the realization of Brahman (IV. 8):

Tasyai tapo damah karmeti pratisthā; vedāh sarvāṅgāni; satyamāyatanam—

'Of the Upaniṣad, tapas (concentration of the energies of the mind and the senses), damah (self-restraint), and karma (dedicated work) form the support; the Vedas (Knowledge) are its limbs; and Truth its abode.'

The Upaniṣad stresses the importance of moral character in the pursuit of spiritual knowledge; for spirituality is not mere scholarship, unlike scholarship, does not arise in the mind of man so long as it is morally impure. As the Praśna Upaniṣad expresses it (I. 16): na yeṣu jihmam anrtam na māyā ceti—'In whom there is no crookedness, no falsehood, and no deception.'

The struggle to overcome the animal impulses, the effort to release the mind from its thraldom to the senses, the endeavour to forge a pure will possessed of the capacity to turn the energies of body and mind in the direction of the divine Self within, this is what makes spiritual life a heroic endeavour. The heroes of the Spirit are the greatest heroes of history. In them, the long

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

travail of evolution achieves its consummation. Man the brute becomes man the God.

An Infinite Personality

The Upaniṣad now concludes with an eulogy of this consummation (IV. 9):

Yo vā etām evaṁ veda, apahatya pāpmānam anante śarge loke jyeye pratitiṣṭhati, pratitiṣṭhati—

'One who realizes it (knowledge of Brahman) thus, destroys sin and is well established in Brahman, the infinite, the blissful and the highest.'

Spiritual realization arises in the human heart when its sinful propensities are destroyed by persistent endeavour. Says the Mahābhārata (12. 197. 8, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Edition):

Jñānamutpadyate puṁsāṁ kṣayāt pāpasya karmanah;

Athādarśatalprakhye paśyatyātmānamātmani—

'Spiritual realization arises in man when his sinful actions are exhausted; just as a man sees himself in a clean mirror so does he realize the Ātman in his own self.'

That the sin referred to by the Upaniṣad has none of the sinister aspects associated with it in dogmatic Christianity is clear from this verse from the Mahābhārata.

The Chāndogya Upaniṣad also, in its narration of Nārada's spiritual education under the illumined teach r. Sanatkumāra, majestically proclaims this fact (VII. xxvi. 2):

Ahāraśuddhaṅ sattvaśuddhiḥ; sattvaśuddhaṅ dhruvā smṛtiḥ:

smṛtilambhe sarvagrathīnāṁ vipramokṣaḥ.

Tasmai mr̥ditakāṣāya tamasaḥ pāram darśayati bhagavān

sanatkumāraḥ—

'To him (Nārada), whose impurities had been completely destroyed, the blessed Sanatkumāra reveals (the Light) beyond the ocean of darkness (spiritual blindness).'

The attainment of Brahman is described in the last verse of the Kena Upaniṣad as the attainment by man of ar infinite personality, of the highest excellence, and of the fullness of bliss. No more hopeful message than this for man in the modern age, caught up as he is ir the meshes of finitude and triviality, but hankering earnestly for the infinite and the universal.

TWELVE

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD–1

Having completed the study of the first two Upaniṣads—the

Īśā and the Kena, we now take up the study of the Kaṭha Upan-

iṣad. The Upaniṣad has a śāntipāṭha, Peace invocation which is

common to several other Upaniṣads as well. It is as follows:

Om. Sahanāvavatu; sahanau bhunaktu;

sahavīryaṁ karavāvahai;

Tejasvināvadhītamastu;

mā vidviṣāvahai.

Om. śāntiḥ. śāntiḥ. śāntiḥ—

'Om! may Brahman protect us (teacher and student) both!

May Brahman nourish us both! May we both acquire energy (as

a result of this study)! May we both become illumined (by this

study)! May we not hate each other.' Om. Peace! Peace! Peace!'

This Peace invocation contains many beautiful sentiments,

sentiments which have inspired Indian education—secular and

religious—for a few thousand years. Teacher and student

engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and excellence of character

is education It is a co-operative endeavour between the student

and the teacher. The invocation expresses the idea of education

as the achievement of knowledge and excellence of character in the

context of a harmonious relationship between teacher and student;

they are en rapport. The giving and receiving of knowledge

leading to the remaking of man depends on the stimulus of such

teacher-student relationship. The teacher gives and the student

receives not only ideas and information, but inspiration as well.

In all true education, teacher and student are not mere individuals

but personalities. Education, according to the Indian sages, is the

lighting of one lamp from another lamp.

Education as Illumination

And so the Upaniṣad begins with a prayer for peace within

and without. 'May Brahman protect us both! May Brahman

nourish us both!' Brahman is the supreme spiritual reality in

man and nature. The student and the teacher in this case are

engaged in a great adventure, the adventure of knowledge; not

264

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

the usual secular knowledge capable of nourishing only our worldly life, but something deeper. It is the knowledge 'by which the Imperishable is realized', as the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad puts it (I. i. 5), and life achieves all-round fulfilment. Weak as we are, even the strongest of us, the challenge of an adventure such as this will chasten us; we shall then feel the need to resort to prayer which is the fruit of a mood of dynamic humility. Says J. A. Thomson (Intr.duction to Science, p. 206):

'At the end of his intellectual tether, man has never ceased to become religious.'

Says Coleridge (Quoted by J. A. Thomson, ibid., p. 208):

'All knowledge begins and ends with wonder; but the first wonder is the child of ignorance; the second wonder is the parent of adoration.'

The mood of dynamic humility seeks expression in prayer to the divine Reality which informs and sustains the universe. This invocation breathes this spirit of humility and robust faith. Saha-vīryaṁ karavāvahai—'May we both acquire energy (as a result of this study)!' Ātmā vindate vīryam—'Through the Ātman man achieves energy', as the Kena Upaniṣad told us earlier. It is this energy gained through the knowledge of the Self that manifests itself as efficiency in work and as efficiency of character. But all efficiency may become a bondage and a snare if it is not nourished by inner illumination. Hence the verse adds: Tejasvī nādhit-anastu—'May we become illumined by this study!'

This is a great idea in Indian thought. Education is not stuffing the brain but illumining the mind and heart; what was dark becomes lit up. Man seeks knowledge for this very end; it is a journey from darkness to light; but this darkness or ignorance is spiritual blindness and not mere intellectual non-understanding. It is thus a journey from evil to good also. Hence the verse adds: mā vidviṣāvahai—'May we not hate each other!' All moral evils proceed from the primary evils of lust and anger which again are the obverse and reverse of a single evil. Anger cannot be overcome without overcoming lust, and vice versa. Says Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā in answer to Arjuna's question, 'By whom impelled does man commit sin?' (III. 36-7):

Kāma eṣa krodha eṣa rajogunasamudbhavah;

Mahasano mahāpāpmā vidhyenam iha vairinam

KATHA UPANIṢAD--1

265

'This (man's propensity to sin) is lust, this is anger, proceeding from the quality of rajas (passionate nature in man); it is characterized by much craving and much sin. Know, thou, this as the enemy here (in human life).'

Hence this prayer for cleansing the heart of all propensity to evil, of all propensity to lust and hatred. These alone create the barrier between man and man. Knowledge is knowledge when it breaks down this barrier. 'Knowledge leads to unity, and ignorance to diversity', says Sri Ramakrishna. This process must commence with the very commencement of education, in an endeavour to break all barriers between the teacher and the taught. We have already seen that education is a co-operative undertaking; hatred, or even indifference, sunders that creative nexus. When hatred goes, faith comes in, faith in oneself and faith in the other. Swami Vivekananda tells us that it is not enough for the student to have faith in the teacher; it is equally necessary for the teacher to have faith in the student, if education is to produce good results. It is only then that mental rapport between the teacher and the student is established. All profound knowledge leading to the inward transformation of man is acquired only in this way. A knowledge of facts and formulae in one or more subjects can be acquired by some form of instruction; in this the personality of the teacher and the personality of the student do not come much into play; and it leaves the student shallow as a personality. But if the knowledge imparted is to percolate to the inner depths and evolve a rich and stable personality, it requires the stimulus of that creative nexus. One of the criticisms against modern education, in both East and West, is that it makes for shallowness; aiming only to instruct but not to inspire, it fails to impart depth to the human personality. There is very little communion of minds; hence no emergence of creative personalities. The credit for the few that do emerge occasionally must go more to their inborn gifts than to the educational process to which they are subjected.

Writing in the American journal, National Parent-Teacher (April 1955), an American critic defines current education as 'that mysterious process whereby information passes from the lecture notes of the professor, through the fountain pen and onto the note book of the student, without passing through the mind of either.'

When we peer into the world of our own education in India today, we realize the truth of this severe criticism. Without enter-

ing into the mind of either student or teacher, education goes on

as static communication of information. As against this, we have

the Indian idea expressed in this invocation and in many other

similar verses in Sanskrit literature. If secular education needs

this communion of minds to produce character and creative personal-

ities, spiritual education needs it all the more. The teacher

having something to give, and the student fit and eager to receive,

are the sine qua non of spiritual education. Says Swami Viveka-

nanda in his lecture on 'My Master' delivered in New York in

1896 (Complete Works, Vol. IV, Eighth Edition, pp. 177-78):

'He alone teaches who has something to give, for teaching is

not talking, teaching is not imparting doctrines, it is communicat-

ing. Spirituality can be communicated just as really as I can give

you a flower. This is true in the most literal sense. This idea

is very old in India and finds illustration in the West in the theory,

in the belief, of apostolic succession.'

The Upaniṣads conceived education as training in clearness

of vision, in purity and strength of will, and in richness and stability

of the emotions. The very word 'Upaniṣad' means 'education

received by a student sitting close to his teacher'. The profounder

the subject, the more the need for close communion between

teacher and student. Such subjects cannot be communicated

through tape-recordings and correspondence courses. The idea

of 'sitting near' emphasizes the importance of personality and the

silence and quietness of communication. Shouting and oratorical

flourishes have no place in these higher levels of knowledge where

more is achieved by hints and suggestions than by words.

Even in modern education we notice that the higher we

proceed the less becomes the number of students, the less the

formal teaching and lecturing, and the more the communication of

stimulus from the teacher to the student. In post-graduate studies,

wherever these studies are genuinely pursued, we see modern

education approaching the Upaniṣadic ideal, the 'sitting near' ideal,

the ideal of teacher-student communion.

This invocation is called a śāntipāṭha, Peace chant, because it

is meant to induce a state of creative tranquillity in the mind by

making it receptive, knowledge-oriented, and bereft of hatred and

other evil passions. It is only then that the mind becomes capable

of receiving, digesting, and assimilating the knowledge gained.

Undigested knowledge is as toxic to the mind as undigested food

is to the body. The body is nourished only from food which is

digested and assimilated. The mind is nourished only when knowledge is digested and assimilated.

Ancient India devoted a good part of its energy to the acquisition of knowledge in various subjects; it has left to posterity the legacy of a vast and varied literature through the medium of a great and highly developed language, Sanskrit. The Upaniṣads form the immortal part of that literary heritage; they have for their theme the real nature of man and his true destiny; and they take for their investigation the inner world of experience. When man achieves some sort of order and stability in his outer life, and if his mind is not stifled in the process but continues to be creative and seeking, he is bound to feel the impact of a vaster and more significant inner world pressing upon his mind and seeking his attention. It is only then that he becomes aware of something profound and deep within himself, close to him and not far away. This recognition at once makes for a gradual silencing of the clamour of the sense-organs; a mood of inwardness and peace descends on the soul of man; and he now enters on the search for the truth of experience, not in the field of sense-data, but beyond them. This stage is characterized by a certain maturity of outlook, a chastening of the emotions, and a mood of comparative unconcern with the pressures of the external world. His pursuit of truth, which was till then intellectual and academic, now becomes a converging life-endeavour.

The Science of the Soul

Only a seeker endowed with such a frame of mind, and backed by a measure of inner discipline, can pierce the outer literary form, and enter into the spiritual atmosphere, of the Upaniṣads. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad, which we shall now study, emphasizes this truth through the two participants in its dialogue: young Naciketā, the student, and wise Yama, the teacher. Naciketā is the embodiment of inner discipline and one-pointed love of truth. He is a child, pure and fresh and fearless, pulsating with life and vigour. And Yama, the god of death, is the master of Self-knowledge; he has pierced the mystery hidden in life and death and achieved wisdom and serenity. His very name suggests self-control and moral elevation. He has compassion for those who struggle in the path of truth. Śaṅkara begins his commentary on this Upaniṣad with a reverential salutation to both Yama and Naciketa:

Om namo bhagavate vaivasvatāya mrtyave brahmavidyācārya-

tāya, naciketase ca—

'Om! Salutation to the god of death, the blessed one, the son of

Vivasvat, and the teacher of Brahmavidyā (the science of God),

as also to Naciketā.'

The Upaniṣad sets out the communication of truth from Yama

to Naciketā. The theme here is the highest theme of Brahmavidyā,

the science of God and soul; it is approached through the ever-

present mystery of death. No philosophy can achieve depth without comprehending the meaning and significance of death. Religion,

as understood in this Upaniṣad, is not something magical or 'misty';

it is not a creed to be believed and salvation assured thereby; it is

a science, the science of spirituality, as communicable and verifi-

able as any science can be. This Upaniṣad, in its sixth and last

chapter, concludes its exposition not with the statement that

Naciketā believed what Yama had told him and was thus redeemed,

but with the statement that he realized the truth for himself and

became free, and that others also can do likewise. It speaks of

God and soul as mysteries, just as a modern scientist describes the

deeper aspects of the universe as mysteries; and it proceeds to help

the earnest inquirer to clear up all this mystery. In the words of

Max Müller (Three Lectures on Vedānta Philosophy, p. 171):

'Mystic meant originally no more than what required prepara-

tion and initiation, and mysteries were not dark things left dark,

but dark things made bright and clear and intelligible.'

Among the Upaniṣads the Kaṭha Upaniṣad stands in a category

all alone. It blends in itself the charm of poetry, the strength of

philosophy, and the depth of mysticism; it contains a more unified

exposition of the spiritual insights of Vedānta than is found in

any other single Upaniṣad. Its appeal is heightened by the two

characters who participate in its dialogue—young Naciketā and old

Yama. The Upaniṣad in its six chapters unrolls a fascinating pic-

ture of young pulsating life, inquisitive and fearless, knocking at

the doors of death the terrible, and extracting from it wisdom

which lies beyond life and death.

The first chapter of the Upaniṣad provides the human setting

for the exposition of its philosophy in the rest of the book.

Firstly, the story is told of how Naciketā asked Yama three

questions, the last of which related to profound metaphysics and

spirituality. Secondly, on the basis of this third question the re-

maining five chapters expound a philosophy which conveys the essential spiritual message of all the Upaniṣads.

The story of Yama and Naciketā is not told for the first time in this Upaniṣad. The story first occurs in the Ṛg-Veda, in its tenth maṇḍala, which speaks of a boy who went to the heaven of Yama at the express desire of his royal father. The story appears in a more developed form in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa of a later period where Naciketā is granted three boons by Yama; the story in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad ccrresponds in all essential particulars with that in the Brāhmaṇa. The single point of difference lies in Yama's answer to the third boon by which Naciketā asked Yama to tell him how to conquer death. In the Brāhmaṇa the answer to this boon referred to the performance of a certain sacrifice; this was but a repetition of the answer to the second boon. But the answer to this question given in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad lifts the subject from sacrifices and rituals to the high level of moral striving and spiritual realization. This little difference makes all the difference between a hedonistic heaven-centred theology and a spiritual character-building philosophy.

The Upaniṣad opens its first chapter of twenty-nine verses with a simple statement recalling an old legend:

Uśan ha vai vājaśravasaḥ sarvavedasaṁ dadau; Tasyā ha naciketā nāma putra āsa—

This is simple unembellished language. The sacrifice in question demanded the giving away of all one's possessions as gifts. The sacrifice commenced. Naciketā, the young son, was watching the proceedings intently. Continuing the simple narration, the Upaniṣad says in its second verse:

Taṁ ha kumāraṁ santam் dakṣiṇāsu nīyamānāsu śraddhā āviveśa. So'manyata—

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THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Śraddhā

Something that the father was doing evoked deep reflection in

the son who was still a kumarra, a boy who had not attained physical

maturity. He became possessed of śraddhā. This word śraddhā has

no exact equivalent in English; it is usually translated as faith;

but it is not faith in a creed or dogma but faith in oneself, faith in

the infinite power lodged in every soul; it is also faith in the

power of truth and goodness, a firm conviction of the ultimate

meaningfulness of the universe. It is the totality of positive atti-

tudes, āstikya buddhi, as Śaṅkara defines it. It is the impelling

force behind man's efforts at character development, his civic vir-

tues and social graces, his search for truth in science and religion.

Its total absence from the heart marks the complete cynical attitude.

Dealing with the importance of this virtue for human character

and achievement, Swami Vivekananda says in his 'Reply to the

Address of Welcome at Calcutta' (Complete Works, Vol. III, Eighth

Edition, pp. 319-20):

'I would not translate this word śraddhā to you, it would be

a mistake; it is a wonderful word to understand, and much de-

pends on it.... Unfortunately, it has nearly vanished from India,

and this is why we are in our present state. What makes the dif-

ference between man and man is the difference in this śraddhā and

nothing else. What makes one man great and another weak and

low is this śraddhā. My Master used to say, he who thinks him-

self weak will become weak, and that is true This śraddhā must

enter into you. Whatever of material power you see manifested

by the western races is the outcome of this śraddhā, because they

believe in their muscles; and if you believe in your spirit, how

much more will it work! Believe in that infinite Soul, the infinite

Power which, with consensus of opinion, your books and sages

preach. That Ātman which nothing can destroy, in It is infinite

Power, only waiting to be called out. For here is the great dif-

ference between all other philosophies and the Indian philosophy.

Whether dualistic, qualified monistic, or monistic, they all firmly

believe that everything is in the soul itself; it has only to come

out and manifest itself. Therefore, this śraddhā is what I want,

and what all of us here want, this faith in ourselves, and before

you is the great task to get that faith. Give up the awful disease

that is creeping into our national blood, that idea of ridiculing

everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up. Be strong and

have this śraddhā, and everything else is bound to follow.'

Cynicism spells the spiritual death of the individual. It scorns

all values. It is the final nemesis of every thorough-going material-

ism. It has afflicted, more or less, every civilization; but it has be-

come the prevailing attitude of modern civilization. It sets in when

man is spiritually weakened through over-emphasis on material

things and physical satisfactions and neglect of the ever-present

datum of his inner self. Man then loses the power to digest experi-

ences; he is, on the other hand, digested by them. In cynicism, the

onward current of evolution is side-tracked and ends up in a stag-

nant pool, a self-centred personality which is no personality but only

'a clod of ailments and grievances', in the words of Bernard Shaw,

'ever complaining that the world does not devote itself to making

you happy'. In ancient civilizations, cynicism used to be only a

peripheral mood; men and women tended to be cynical in advanc-

ing years due to jolts and defeats in life's battles; but it was rarely

the mood of early life. Whereas, in the modern age, it has become

the central mood afflicting men of all ages, beginning with the

youth hardly out of his teens, and extending to the proud intellect-

ual, and to the aged man tottering on his stick. This is the surest

index of the decay of a civilization, of its utter insufficiency, its

spiritual poverty. When a man loses faith in himself, he loses faith

in everyone and everything else as well, and the gate is opened

to all-round degeneration.

Swami Vivekananda sounded the note of warning about the

centuries-old loss of śraddhā by the people of India more than sixty

years ago. That warning had a wholesome effect on the national

mind, it induced a wave of faith in oneself and love for man in

the people, and led them to political independence. But since in-

dependence there has been a slow decay of idealism and an invasion

of this dire disease of cynicism. Unless we recognize it as a-dis-

ease and take steps to eradicate it, there is no hope for our society.

We have set before ourselves the task of eradicating diseases such

as cholera, small-pox, tuberculosis, and leprosy. This is, undoubt-

edly, vital for our national health; but far more vital is the need

to eradicate the deadly virus of cynicism, the loss of śraddhā, corrod-

ing the human heart. This is achieved only through spiritual

education; and the Upaniṣads hold out the priceless blessing of

such an education to our people, nay, to the people of every coun-

try today. It will strengthen the inner life of man by imparting

to him a philosophy of man and his destiny which is rational,

practical, and universal, and in tune with the deep-felt urges of

the modern age. It will help him to capture faith in man and

his high destiny, and to retain his youthful zest and joy throughout

life.

Fortified with this accession of śraddhā, young Naciketā thought within himself. What was the trend of his reflection? The next verse, verse three, indicates this:

Pītodakā jagdhatṛṇā dugdhadohā nirindriyāḥ;Anandā nāma te lokā tān sa gacchati tā dadat-

Evidently, the father was not sincere in fulfilling the demands of the sacrifice which he had voluntarily undertaken. He was to give in charity all he possessed. What he was actually giving were old and useless cattle. Such deception is the path not to a joyful heaven but to a joyless hellish existence. And the truthful son could not reconcile himself to it. So in verse four we find him gently but firmly taking a creative kasma step:

Sa hovaca pitaram் tata kasmai māṁ dāsyasīti;Dvitīyam் tritīyam் tai̇ hovāca, mrtyave tvā dadāmīti-

The son reminded his father that he was to give away all his possessions; that he, as his son, was also meant to be given away, and so he wanted to know to whom his father proposed to give him. In asking this, he revealed the fearlessness and boldness proceeding from his innate virtue of śraddhā. He had great love for his father; but he had greater love for truth and righteousness. His goodness was not static but dynamic. His love for his father and his love for truth found dynamic expression in an effort to bring his father to the path of truth. The father ignored the son's question; but the son pressed home his question a second and a third time. Then the father lost his temper at what he considered to be the impudence of his son, and exploded in anger: 'Unto death I give thee.'

Fearless Love of Truth

Hearing the angry words of his father, Naciketā was not perturbed; nor was he angry with his father. He was ever ready to do anything or go anywhere for love of truth. He thought within himself as the next verse, the fifth, tells us:

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD--1

273

Bahūnāṁ emi prathamo bahūnāṁ emi madhyamaḥ;

Kimsvit yamasya kartavyam yanmayāya kariṣyati—

In the meantime the father regained his composure and repented his rash utterance. He wanted to withdraw what he had said. But Naciketā did not appreciate his father's desire to eat his own words. He must, Naciketā felt, stick to truth and bring harmony between his th…ght, speech, and action. Everything must be sacrificed for the sake of truth which alone is eternal. So in the next verse, verse six, we find him admonishing his father:

Anupasyan yathā pūrve pratipasyas tathāpare;

Sasyamiva martyah pacyate sasyamivājāyate punah—

Naciketā reminds his father how their forefathers never abandoned truth, even for fear of death; how the great ones of their own times also never swerved from the path of truth. How, then, could his father now break his word for fear of sending his son to the world of death? How ephemeral is human life and how eternal is the majesty of truth! Is it wisdom to sacrifice the latter for the former? Truth, satya, which expresses itself as righteousness, dharma, in human life, is an eternal value. It cannot be moulded and shaped to suit human convenience. The latter, on the other hand, must be made to conform to Truth. The mind and heart of Naciketā had become fearless because of his love of truth. Even death held no terror for him. He is a shining example for human society, ancient or modern. Says Swami Vivekananda (Lecture on 'The Real Nature of Man', Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, pp. 84-85):

'Truth does noi pay homage to any society, ancient or modern.

Society has to pay homage to Truth, or die. Societies should be moulded upon truth, and truth has not to adjust itself to society....

That society is the greatest, where the highest truths become practical. That is my opinion; and if society is not fit for the highest truths, make it so; and the sooner, the better. Stand up, men and women, in this spirit, dare to believe in the Truth, dare to practise the Truth! The world requires a few hundred bold men and wo-

men. Practise that boldness which dares know the Truth, which dares show the Truth in life, which does not quake before death, nay, welcomes death, makes a man know that he is the Spirit, that, in the whole universe, nothing can kill him. Then you will be free.

Man swerves from the path.of truth and righteousness under the pulls of his sensate nature. He is then unaware of his true spiritual stature. As he becomes increasingly aware of his spiritual nature, he learns to keep under control the impulsions of his lower sensate nature and live a life, truthful and righteous. This is the achievement of spiritual strength to which all other forms of man's strength, physical or intellectual, are but the means. The Mahābhārata exhorts man to gain this spiritual strength by constant devotion to dharma, righteousness (18. 5. 50, Bhandarkar Edition):

Na jātu kāmāt na bhayāt na lobhāt dharmam tyajet jivitasyāpi hetoḥ;

Nityo dharmaḥ sukhaduḥkhe tv anitye jīvo nityo heturasyatv anityāḥ—

'Neither through lust, nor fear, nor greed shall man forsake dharma even to save his life; for eternal is dharma, ephemeral are joys and sorrows; eternal is the soul of man, but ephemeral, however, is its cause (which makes for the soul's limitation in a body).'

The pulls of lust, fear, and greed are inhibitors of the moral sense in man. Man allows himself to come under their sway when he takes himself to be a mere aggregation of body and sense-organs. As pure Spirit he is eternal; but he is conditioned by budy and sense-organs, and the fruits of actions done by them, which are perishable. Blinded by this conditioning, he takes himself to be a limited perishable entity. So deluded, he succumbs to the tyranny of the immediate present, to the sway of his lower sensate nature, which is characterized by a state of constant tension and fear and which always seeks only its own profit, pleasure, and perpetuation. When he begins to be aware of his spiritual nature he begins also his march to freedom, freedom from the sway of his sensate nature. This marks the evolution of his moral personality, characterized by increasing fearlessness and largeness of vision and sympathy, and culminating in the realization of his true selfhod in the Ātman, the universal Self.

The Kaṭha Upaniṣad will illumine for us this passage of man from the finite to the infinite, from darkness of unawareness to the light of awareness, and from death to immortality, in the succeeding verses of this chapter and in the remaining five chapters.

THIRTEEN

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD–2

The first six verses of the first chapter of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, which we studied in the last lecture, acquainted us with the exemplary character of young Naciketā, with his passion for truth and his fearlessness of death. Exhorted by Naciketā to keep to truth and righteousness. Vājaśravā, his father, eventually reconciled himself to the prospect of his son's going to the abode of Yama (god of death). And Naciketā reached the abode of Yama. But Yama was not at home then, and Naciketā had to wait there without food until Yama returned after three days. The Upaniṣad now proceeds to say, in its seventh and eighth verses, what people in Yama's house told him on his return about the neglect of the august visitor in his house; and to describe the results accruing from this sin:

Vaiśvānaraḥ pravisatyatithir brāhmaṇo grhān; Tasyaitāṁ śāntim kurvantī hara vairaśatodakam—

Āśāpratīkṣe saṅgatam் sūnrtāṁ ca iṣṭāpūrte putrapaśūn ca sarvān; Etat vrṇte puruṣasyālpamedhaso yasyānaśnan vasati brāhmaṇo grhe—

The First Two Boons

Yama keenly felt a sense of guilt and decided to make amends, as verse nine tells us. Approaching Naciketā he said:

Tisro rātrīryadāvātsīrgrhe me anāśnan brahman atithirnamasyah;

Namaste'stu brahman svasti me'stu tasmāt prati trīn varān vṛṇīṣva—

Obseisance to thee, O holy one, and may all be well with me as well.'

Naciketā chose for his first boon, says verse ten, peace of mind for his father, revealıng thus the tender human side of his character:

Śāntasaṁkalpaḥ sumanā yathā syāt

vītamanyuḥ gautamo mā'bhimṛtyo;

Tvat prasṛṣṭaṁ mā'bhivadet pratīta

etat trayāṇāṁ prathamaṁ varaṁ vṛne—

'O Death, I choose as the first of the three boons that Gautama (my father) be cheerful and free from anxiety and anger; and that he may recognize and welcome me when I shall be sent back home by thee.'

Granting this boon easily, Yama said in verse eleven:

Yathā purastāt bhavitā pratīta

auddālakirāruṇirmatprasṛṣṭah;

Śukhaṁ rātriṁ śāyita vītamanyūṁ

tvāṁ dadrśivān mṛtyumukhāt pramuktam—

'By my command, Auddālaki Āruṇi (Gautama) shall recognize thee when he sees thee after being released from the jaws of death; and he shall be towards thee even as he was before; he shall (also) sleep peacefully at night and be free from anger.'

Heaven and What Lies Beyond

Having secured peace at home and his own return to the human world with his first boon, Naciketā's thoughts turned to heaven. He formulated, in verses twelve and thirteen, his second boon thus:

Svarge loke na bhayaṁ kiṅcanāsti

na tatra tvāṁ na jarayā bibheti;

Ubhe tīrtvā aśanāyāāppāse

śokātigo modate svargaloke—

'In heaven there is no fear; Thou art not there (O Death); nor is one afraid of old age. In that heaven-world, (one) rejoices, having crossed both hunger and thirst and overcome all sorrow.'

Sa tvam agnim svargyam adhyeṣi mṛtyo

prabṛūhi tvāṁ śraddadhānāya mahyam;

Svargalokā amṛtatvam் bhajanta

etat dvitīyena vṛṇe varēṇa—

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD-2

277

'Thou knowest, O Death, that fire (sacrifice) which leads to heaven; teach it to me who am possessed of faith. Those who are in heaven are deathless, (so I have heard). This I choose for my second boon.'

The first attempt of philosophy in India, as elsewhere, was to reach the ultimate Reality through a study of the external universe revealed by the five senses. Such attempts led either to a personal god as the governor of the universe or to the unity and self-sufficiency of undifferentiated and insentient nature. But these could not be the whole truth; each of them could at best be a partial truth—either a human or a physical explanation of the universe. But our human or physical conceptions do not cover the whole of existence. A solution of the problem of the universe, as we can get from the outside, labours under this difficulty that, in the first place, the universe we see is our own particular universe, our own view of Reality. That Reality cannot be seen through the senses; and our universe is what our five senses abstracts out of this Reality. This very universe would appear quite different to us if we had more than five senses. Our senses are very limited, and within this limitation exists what we call our universe. And a personal god or insentient nature may be the solution for that universe, but it cannot be the solution for the totality of existence.

In the earlier part of the Vedas there developed the idea of heaven. It arose out of the desire to go beyond the sense-world and sense-life. Life and work on this earth were conceived as a preparation for heaven which was taken to be the highest excellence for man. The tensions and struggles, privations and sorrows, of earthly life become transcended in a life of perpetual joy and sunshine. Every one of the world religions has upheld a heaven philosophy of one sort or another, but has also gone beyond it in the truly spiritual part of its teachings. In the Vedic religion, this heaven philosophy was subjected to close scrutiny by the Upaniṣadic part of the Vedic literature. The Upaniṣads discovered the insufficiency of the heaven concept. Life in heaven would not be very different from life in this world. At best it would only be a healthy rich man's life, with plenty of sense enjoyments and a sound body which knows no disease. It would still be this material world, only a little more refined. We have referred already to the difficulty that a study of the external material world alone can never solve the problem of Reality; it follows that no such heaven also can solve the problem. Says Swami Vivekananda

(Lecture on 'Realization', Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, p. 159):

'If this world cannot solve the problem, no multiplication of this world can do so, because we must always remember that matter is only an infinitesimal part of the phenomena of nature. The vast part of phenomena which we actually see, is not matter.

'For instance, in every moment of our life, what a great part is played by thought and feeling compared with the material phenomena outside! How vast is this internal world with its tremendous activity! The sense phenomena are very small compared with it The heaven solution commits this mistake; it insists that the whole of phenomena is only in touch, taste, sight, etc. So this idea of heaven did not give full satisfaction to all.'

It was this dissatisfaction with the philosophies of an extra-cosmic personal god, of the unity of insentient nature, and of a hedonistic heaven concept that led to the abandonment, by the ancient Indian thinkers, of the dogmatic approach to philosophy, and the development of the critical approach. The Upaniṣads register this momentous development.

The sages of the Upaniṣads penetrated deeper and deeper into experience; they sought to find the centre of the universe in order to discover the unity behind this diversity. They discovered the fact that the nearer one is to the centre of a circle, the nearer one is to the common ground where all the radii meet; and the farther one is from the centre, the more divergent become the radial lines from each other. The external world, being farthest away from the centre, provides no common ground where all the phenomena of existence can meet; it is also only one of the many parts of the universe. There are the other parts, the mental, the moral, the aesthetic, and the intellectual, as various planes of existence. To take up only one of these and seek to find a solution of the problem of the whole of existence out of that one is not satisfactory.

To quote Swami Vivekananda again (ibid., p. 157):

'We first, therefore, want to find somewhere a centre from which, as it were, all the other planes of existence start, and standing there we should try to find a solution. That is the proposition. And where is that centre? It is within us. The ancient sages penetrated deeper and deeper until they found that in the innermost core of the human soul is the centre of the whole universe. All the planes gravitate towards that one point; that is the common ground, and standing there alone can we find a common solution.'

This is the special theme of all the Upaniṣads, and especially of

the Kaṭha Upaniṣad; it is, as we shall presently see, the one all-

absorbing search in the heart of Naciketā. But since Yama had

generously granted him three boons, he meant to tackle this theme

with his jealously guarded third boon. He could very well use the

first and second boons, therefore, for things of lesser concern. The

first he appropriately used for an intensely human purpose. With

the second he seeks now, moved by sheer curiosity, to have a peep

into heaven; for many there were in his time who sought, as there

are bound to be some at all times who seek, a safe and delightful

heaven as the highest excellence.

Readily granting this boon, Yama said, in the words of verse

fourteen:

Prate bravīmi tadume nibodha

svargyamagnim naciketah prajānan;

Anantalokāptimatho pratiṣṭhām

viddhi tvametām nihitām svāyām—

'Knowing well the Fire (sacrifice), O Naciketā, which leads to

heaven, I tell it to thee—learn it from me. Know this as the

means of attaining the infinite world (of heaven), the support of

this world, and hidden in the heart (of the learned in the Vedas).'

The Upaniṣad narration continues, in verses fifteen and sixteen,

to describe the sacrifice and Yama's conferring an additional boon

on Naciketā:

Lokādimagnim tamuvāca tasmai

yā iṣṭakā yāvatīrvā yathā vā;

Sa cāpi tat pratyavadat yathoktam

athāsya mrtyuh punarevāha tuṣṭah—

'Then he (Yama) explained to him that Fire which is the source

of the world, and also what kind of bricks and how many (of

them) were required (for the altar), and how (the sacrificial fire

was to be lit). And he (Naciketā), on his part, repeated every-

thing as told, at which, being pleased, Yama said again.

Tamabravīt priyamāno mahātmā

varam tavehādya dadāmi bhūyah;

Tavaiva nāmnā bhavitāyamagnih

śṛṅkam cemām anekarūpam gṛhāṇa—

"The high-souled (Yama), being well pleased, said to him (Naciketā): I give thee here and now one extra boon: (henceforth) this Fire (sacrifice) shall bear thy name; and accept also this garland of various hues.'

Yama was struck by the sharp intelligence and memory of Naciketā. He was to see more of it soon, and to have, perhaps for the first time in his experience, the joy and stimulus of crossing his wits with a seeking penetrating mind; and he was to say later on, as befits a great teacher: 'May I have more questioning students like you, O Naciketā' (ibid., II. 9).

The Upaniṣad now gives, in two verses, verses seventeen and eighteen, its estimate of the fruit of the sacrifice, now called the Nāciketa sacrifice:

Triṇāciketastribhiretya sandhim

trikarmakṛt tarati janmamṛtyu;

Brahmaajñañam devamīḍyam viditvā

nicāyyemām śāntimatyantameti—

'One who has thrice performed the Nāciketā sacrifice and united himself with the three (instruction by the mother, the father, and the preceptor), and who has also done his threefold duties (study of the Vedas, performance of rituals, and giving alms), overcomes (the round of) birth and death; and having known and realized that worshipful, omniscient, and resplendent one (the deity of Fire), born of Brahman, he attains supreme peace.'

Triṇāciketāstrayametat viditvā

ya evam் vidvān cinute nāciketam;

Sa mṛtyupāśān purataḥ praṇodya

śokātigo modate svargaloke—

'The wise (man) who, having known the three (details about bricks), performs the Nāciketa rite three times, experiences joy in the heaven-world free from grief, after destroying the bondage of death (even) before (the fall of the body).'

Yama now calls upon Naciketā, in verse nineteen, to choose his third boon:

Eṣa te'gniṛnaciketaḥ svargyo

yamavṛṇīthāḥ dvitīyena vareṇa;

Etamagnim tavaiva pravakṣyanti

janāsaḥ; tribhyam் varam naciketo vṛṇīṣva—

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD–2

281

'This is thy Fire, O Naciketā, which leads to heaven, and which was chosen by thee as the second boon. People will call this Fire after thy name only; now choose, O Naciketā, thy third boon.'

A Question Fraught with Great Blessings

We can well imagine the buoyant hope that must have welled up in the heart of this young votary of truth when the opportunity arrived for him to use his last and remaining boon to explore the subject of truth–his life's converging passion. He was in his true element now; he felt himself entering into his true mood, leaving behind the world of make-believe by which static common sense and timid piety had covered the face of truth. He now formulates, in verse twenty, his third and last boon in precise well-chosen words:

Yeyam் prete vicikitsā manuṣye

astītyeke nāyamasti caike;

Etat vidyām anuśiṣṭastvayāham்

varāṇāṁsa varastritīyah—

'When a man dies there is this doubt: some say that he exists; some (others) say that he does not exist. This I should like to know, being taught by you. Of the boons this is (my) third boon.'

It is the phenomenon of death that makes us ask questions about life. What is the truth about life? How many times does this question arise in our minds? We eat and drink, we experience joys and sorrows, successes and defeats. We just live our lives or, rather, allow ourselves to be driftwoods in life's current until one day we see someone dying, or we ourselves stand face to face with death. This induces in us a mood of questioning about life and its purposes. What is life? What is man? Is there anything abiding in him? Is there anything abiding in the world? The world outside is in constant flux. The body and mind of man are also in a constant state of change even when he is alive, and entirely cease to be in the final change of death.

This mood of questioning comes to all people at some time or other in their lives. But the mood does not stay; the pressures of external life drive it away and man continues his humdrum existence, shut out from the knowledge of the mystery which alone renders life meaningful and worthwhile. But if the mood stays, man becomes philosophical; he achieves spiritual depth. If it is not properly handled, however, this mood will make man pessimistic.

282

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

tic and apathetic, and rob him of all zest in life. He will become

in the words of Shakespeare, 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of

thought'; from the thoughtless and shallow optimism of worldliness

he will swing to the opposite extreme of the sickly pessimism of

other-worldliness. There is, therefore, need to discipline this mood

of questioning that the experience of death induces in man. It

must be disciplined in the rigorous pursuit of truth, unattached

to passing moods and unafraid of consequences. This is the Vedāntic

discipline which is also the discipline of modern science. It is such

a disciplined mind that we shall meet with in Naciketā. The

Upaniṣad with special significance for human thought.

The approach to truth here is not through the investigation of

external nature; that is the method and field of the positive sciences

which, at their farthest reach, are inconclusive as to the meaning

and mystery of existence but are suggestive of a greater mystery

within man himself.

In these lectures I have already quoted the views expressed by

Lincoln Barnett in his 'The Universe and Dr. Einstein (pp. 126-27;

Mentor edition). They are significant enough to bear repetition

here:

'In the evolution of scientific thought, one fact has become im-

pressively clear: there is no mystery of the physical world which

does not point to a mystery beyond itself. All highways of the

intellect, all byways of theory and conjecture lead ultimately to

an abyss that human ingenuity can never span. For man is en-

chained by the very condition of his being, his finiteness and in-

volvement in nature. The farther he extends his horizons, the

more vividly he recognizes the fact that, as the physicist Niels

Bohr puts it, "We are both spectators and actors in the great drama

of existence." Man is thus his own greatest mystery. He does

not understand the vast veiled universe into which he has been

cast for the reason that he does not understand himself. He com-

prehends but little of his organic processes and even less of his

unique capacity to perceive the world about him, to reason and to

dream. Least of all does he understand his noblest and most

mysterious faculty: the ability to transcend himself and perceive

himself in the act of preception.' (Italics not author's.)

Naciketā is setting out to investigate precisely this mysterious

internal nature of man with its faculty to transcend himself and

perceive himself in the act of perception. This mystery of man

holds the key to all other mysteries that baffle the human mind,

thinks Naciketā. Man presents two aspects: one, that which makes for his finiteness and involvement in nature, and the other, faintly suggested in modern scientific thought, that which makes for his transcendence of such involvement. The first views him as a tissue of evanescent changes, like the panorama of nature around him; the second dimly gives hints of an eternal dimension to his being. If the first is the whole truth, then certain consequences follow for man and his civilization; but if the second is true, if it is true that man is essentially a spiritual entity, birthless and deathless, then certain other consequences follow which are more tremendous in their impaci than in the first case.

Hence the third question that Naciketā asks Yama stands at the cross-roads of human thought and destiny. Naciketā thinks that an answer to this question can alone make life meaningful and worthwhile; otherwise, human life will appear to a thinking mind to be just 'a tale told by an idiot', as expressed so pungently by Shakespeare. It is, then, no wonder that this question has agitated the minds of serious seekers of truth in East and West, ancient and modern. In the very opening paragraph of his famous lecture on 'Immortality' delivered in America, Swami Vivekananda refers to the perennial fascination of this subject to the human mind (Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, p. 226):

'What question has been asked a greater number of times, what idea has led men more to search the universe for an answer, what question is nearer and dearer to the human heart, what question is more inseparably connected with cur existence, than this one, the immortality of the human soul? It has been the theme of poets and sages, of priests and prophets; kings on the throne. have discussed it, beggars in the street have dreamt of it. The best of humanity have approached it, and the worst of men have hoped for it. The interest in the theme has not died yet, nor will it die so long as human nature exists. Various answers have been presented to the world by various minds. Thousands, again, in every period of history have given up the discussion, and yet the question remains fresh as ever. Often in the turmoil and struggle of our lives we seem to forget it, but suddenly someone dies-one, perhaps, whom we loved, one, near and dear to our hearts, is snatched away from us—and the struggle, the din, and the turmoil of the world around us cease for a moment, and the soul asks the old question, "What after this?" "What becomes of the soul?"

Naciketā's question relating to this tremendous theme, however, was to Yama like the bursting of a bombshell. How could he dare to impart this truth to a mere stripling? But he was

bound by his promise to grant whatever boon the boy sought.

Why not try to take the boy's mind off this profound theme by

offering him alternatives more attractive to boyish hearts? Think-

ing thus, Yama addresses Naciketā in verse twenty-one:

Devairatrāpi vicikitsitam purā

na hi sujñeyam anureṣa dharmah;

Anyam varam naciketo vṛṇīṣva

mā moparodhīḥ ati mā srjainam—

'On this subject, even the gods in olden times had their doubts;

very subtle is this subject and not easy to comprehend. Choose,

therefore, O Naciketā, some other boon; press me not on this (boon).'

But the boy stood firm, says verse twenty-two, meeting arg-

ument with argument:

Devairatrāpi vicikitsitam kila

tvam ca mrtyo yanna sujñeyamātha;

Vaktā cāsya tvādrganyo na labhyo

nānyo varastulya etasya kaścit—

'Thou sayest indeed, O Death, that even the gods had their doubts

on this subject and that it is not easy to comprehend; but another

teacher like thee is not to be found and I consider no other boon

equal to this.'

Temptations Refused

Yama was impressed with this plain speaking. He admired

the boy's single-minded devotion to truth. But he wanted to make

sure that it was genuine and not the product of a tutored or

assumed bravado. So he decided to subject him to some further

tests. In the next three verses, twenty-three to twenty-five, we

have Yama acting as the tempter oï Naciketā:

Śatāyuṣaḥ putrapautrān vṛṇīṣva

bahūn paśūn hastihiraṇyamaśvān;

Bhūmermahadāyatanam vṛṇīṣva

svayam ca jīva śarado yāvadicchasi—

'Choose sons and grandsons who shall live a hundred years, many

cattle, elephants, and horses and (much) gold; choose immense ter-

ritory on earth; and thyself live on for as many autumns as thou

desirest.'

Etal tulyam yadi manyase varam .

vrniṣva, vittam cijivikām ca;

Mahābhūmau naciketastvamedhi

kāmānām tvā kāmabhājam karomi—

'Ask for any other boon that thou thinkest equal to this, (such as)

wealth and long life. Be (a ruler) on the wide earth, O Naciketā.

I will make thee the enjoyer of all pleasures.'

Ye ye kāmā durlabhā martyaloke

sarvān kāmān chandatah prārthyasva;

Imā rāmāḥ sarvathāḥ satūryāḥ

nahīḍśā lambhanīyā manuṣyaiḥ;

Ābhirmatprattībhīḥ paricārayasva

naciketo naranam mānuprākṣīḥ—

'Whatever pleasures are difficult to get in this mortal world, do

thou ask for all of them according to thy choice; these fair damsels with chariots and musical instruments—things such as these

are not obtainable by men; by these. as given by me, be thou attended upon; but question me not, O Naciketā, about death.'

Yama has presented his case as forcefully and clearly as possible.

If Naciketā is an ordinary and immature boy, to impart to

him the profound philosophy of the Ātman, the ever-pure, ever-illumined, ever-free, and deathless Self in man, would be a rash

act on his part. From the point of view of the boy also, it would

be a scrap of useless information for him; it would be like kāka-dantaparīkṣā—‘examining the teeth of a crow', as Śaṅkara puts it

in his comment on this verse. Yama must first satisfy himself

'that behind the third question is a questioner, may be young in

years, but mature in mind and heart, pure, alert, and sensitive,

and firm of will and purpose.

Naciketā was totally unimpressed by the alluring prospects

held out by Yama. His mind sought truth and nothing but truth,

and not profit, comfort, and pleasure; and this was a firm conviction with him and not a mere opinion or hearsay. With a mind

which was mahāḥrdavat akṣobhyamānāḥ—‘unshakeable like a

mighty lake', in the words of Śaṅkara in his comment on this

verse, Naciketā replies to Yama, in the remaining four verses of

this chapter, verses twenty-six to twenty-nine, in a voice low, soft,

but sure:

286

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Śvobhāvā mṛtyasya yadantakaitat

sarvendriyāṁ jarayanti tejaḥ;

Api sarvam jīvitam alpameva

tavaiva vāhāstava ṛtyagīte—

'These (all the pleasures you have.enumerated) are transient, O Death; they (also) wear out the vigour of all the sense-organs of mortal man. Moreover, all life (long or short) is only alpam, little (from the point of view of eternity). Let thy chariots, dance, and song remain with thee only.'

In this brief utterance Naciketā has evaluated all self-sufficient hedonistic philosophies. He and others like him have impressed upon the Indian mind that the object of human life is knowledge and not pleasure. Pleasure and pain are incidental to physical existence; the animals function only on that plane but man has the capacity and privilege to transcend it and achieve intellectual knowledge, moral elevation, aesthetic delight, and spiritual perfection. Though living and functioning in time, man experiences the longing for the eternal and reaches out to it in diverse ways.

Naciketā rejects sense pleasures, firstly because they are transient, and secondly because indulgence in them beyond a certain measure destroys the vigour of the sense-organs and arrests the onward march of the soul to self-knowledge and self-fulfilment.

The modern concepts and programmes of social security and of the welfare state suffer from this serious limitation. They involve a cuncept of man and his destiny which contains features which are necessary but not sufficient. Man seeking only pleasure, comfort, and security is man viewed from the surface. Man seeking truth, and courting even pain, discomfort, insecurity, and loss in its wake, is another view of him, a more glorious one, one that betokens his evolutionary march to perfection. Pleasure that does not lead to self-knowledge cloys the senses and produces ennui and frustration in the end. Entertainment, excitement, and exhaustion form a triple sequence in all such pursuits of pleasure. Instead of life expansion and fulfilment, it leads to life contraction and negation. What Schopenhauer said about a hundred years ago in his The World as Will and Idea, (Vol. I, p. 404) is proved largely true in the case of man in modern welfare states:

'Almost all men who are secure from want and care, now that at last they have thrown off all other burdens, become a burden to themselves.... As want is the constant scourge of the

people, so ennui is that of the fashionable world. In the middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sunday, and want by the six week-days.'

So Naciketā continues:

Na vittena tarpanyīyo manuṣyo

lapsyāmahe vittamadrākṣya cet tvā;

Jīvisyāmo yāvadīśiṣyasi tvam

varastu vā varaṇīyaḥ sa eva—

'Man is never satisfied with wealth. (Moreover) when we have seen thee, we shall surely get wealth; we shall (also) live as long as thou rulest. But that alone is the boon fit to be chosen by me.'

Man seeks wealth to satisfy his urge for physical or mental pleasure. Desire seeks satisfaction; wealth helps him to get this satisfaction. If unchecked by ethical and spiritual values and disciplines, this urge for pleasure in him becomes an endless urge; every satisfaction raises ten more urges for pleasure in its place. Desires chase satisfactions and satisfactions chase desires, leaving man an increasing fraction of a personality and a prey to unethical proclivities. The ideal of a complete man, integral and fulfilled, recedes far into the background.

This vital truth about man at the sensate level was discovered by the ancient sages of India and incorporated by them in her social philosophy. It finds expression in the poignant words of a great emperor of prehistoric India, Yayāti. Reaching old age with a youthful heart still longing for pleasure, he begged each of his sons to give him youth in exchange for his old age; they all refused except the youngest one who, moved by filial affection, gladly parted with his youth and accepted the old age of his father. Yayāti, now young again, plunged once more with zest into a life of pleasure. Years passed in this care-free manner until one day he noticed that his skin was developing wrinkles and his hair was turning grey. He marked with dismay the onset of old age again and, with it, the prospect of imminent death. But he was distressed to find that his heart was still craving for pleasures; the body had become old and unfit as an instrument of pleasure, but the heart remained youthful in its urge for pleasure. This glaring contrast made him thoughtful; and, reviewing his life with its double round of pleasures, he was struck with the foolishness of it all and exclaimed to himself (Bhāgavatam, IX. xix. 14):

Na jātu kāmaḥ kāmānām upabhogena sāmyati;

Haviṣā krṣnavartmeva bhūya evābhi vardhate—

'Desires are never satiated by the enjoyment of desires; thereby they only flame forth ever more like fire with butter.'

This wisdom which came to Yayāti is echoed in some of the deeper levels of the world's literary heritage. Goethe's Faust, in his soliloquy in the wood, breathes this tragic pathos in human life at the stage before it rises to the sunlit height of the wisdom expressed by Yayāti:

Oh, for the broken state of man: I know

Our unfulfilment now! Thou gavest bliss

Which brings me near and nearer to the gods,

And gavest, too, the dark companion whom

I cannot rid me of, though with his scorn

He breaks my pride, and in a single word,

A breath, turns all thy gifts and makes them nothing.

He builds a wildfire in my heart, a blaze,

Till from desire I stumble to possession,

And in possession languish from desire.

Modern technological civilization over-emphasizes sensate values; it therefore produces and supplies a wide range of consumer goods on an ever-increasing scale. What was one individual's experience in Yayāti of ancient days, the experience of desire and satisfaction chasing each other in an endless process, has now become a world-wide phenomenon. The Hoover Committee's Report upon the post-war economic changes in the United States contains the following significant confession, echoing Yayāti's sentiments (Quoted by Lewis Mumford in his Technics and Civilisation, p. 393):

'The survey has proved conclusively what has long been held theoretically to be true, that wants are almost insatiable, that one want makes way for another. The conclusion is that economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants as fast as they are satisfied.'

Naciketā said to Yama: Man is not satisfied with wealth. This has for its positive corollary the idea that the unchecked pursuit of wealth and sensate satisfactions does not express the true glory of the human spirit. That glory will find expression only through man's control of his sensate nature. This is renunciation, which is the eternal message of religion; it is renunciation of the trivial

and the finite, and manifestation of the large and the infinite. Ordinary man seeks freedom of the senses; religion teaches him to seek freedom from the senses. True freedom and delight come to man only through renunciation. Joy is to be sought, but not joy that hides a rumbling moan within. The Īśā Upaniṣad, as we have seen before, therefore asks man to 'enjoy through renunciation': Tena tyaktena bhuñjithāh.

Naciketā was not a kill-joy ascetic pursuing sterile ascetic ways. He loved life and its joys; but he loved truth more than both, and pursued it single-mindedly, so that the life he lived might be the true life, and the joys he experienced might be the true joys. Pursuit of knowledge and excellence is strenuous exercise needing all the health and vigour of the psycho-physical system. And since he was dead-set on this pursuit, he politely asks Yama, with a touch of filial irony, to keep those attractive things to himself, and says, in verse twenty-eight:

Ajīryatām amṛtānām upetya jīryan mṛtyān kadhanṣṭhan prajānan; Abhidhyāyan varṇaratipramodān atidīrghe jīvite ko rameta—

'Having approached the ageless and immortal ones, and knowing (the more worthy boons to be had from them), what man, living on the earth below, and himself subject to aging and death, can exult in a life of long duration, after closely scrutinizing the pleasures of dancing and singing?'

Naciketā's discriminating mind shines out in this verse. A round of pleasures can be welcome to a man if he knows nothing better. Such men, however, are immature; they are just grown-up children. But when a man finds wider horizons opening up before him, it would be utterly foolish on his part to remain confined to the trivial sense-life of his immature years; this refusal to grow up spiritually means stagnation, which is spiritual death. He can avoid it only by becoming a seeker of truth and excellence, and commencing his march from the valley to the peaks. This march is a strenuous endeavour and will demand increasing knowledge, endurance, and courage. These are the values that the discriminating seeker will prize then, and not a 'thoughtless' round of 'dancing and singing'. Naciketā therefore says that, having got the rare opportunity of meeting a great teacher like Yama

M.U.—19.

and receiving his favour, it would be utterly foolish of him if he were now to forsake his original question and ask for trivial things;

it would be, Naciketā thinks, like a man using the favours of an emperor to ask him for a few kilos of vegetables!

And so Naciketā, in the twenty-ninth and last verse of this chapter, firmly tells Yama that he stands by his original request and that it is up to Yama to stand by his original promise, or retract:

Yasminnidam vicikitsanti mṛtyo

yatsāmparāye mahati brūhi nastat;

Yoyam varo gūdhamanu pravisṭo

nānyam tasmāi naciketā vṛṇīte—

'Tell us, O Death, about that supreme theme of the Hereafter in which they have this doubt. Naciketā shall not choose any other boon than this which is (so) profound and mysterious.

Naciketā tells Yama in plain words: Please stop this pastime of tempting me with transient things and pleasures. I am convinced that the question that I have asked as my third boon is fraught with great blessings for me and for all humanity. It is capable of arresting the stagnation in human life proceeding from a rank materialistic outlook and the unmitigated worldliness it engenders. Hence I beseech you to honour your promise and enlighten me on this subject of far-reaching significance.

Yama was immensely pleased; he was proud of this young boy who had stood the severest of tests and established his fitness to receive and to benefit from knowledge of the truth asked for in his third boon; and using the subject of the boon as a starting point, he proceeded to impart to him the highest wisdom. This forms the theme of the next five chapters, as we shall see in the lectures to follow.

FOURTEEN

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD--3

In the last discourse, we left Yama and Naciketā facing each other, Naciketā expecting the answer from Yama to his question about the truth of the Hereafter. Yama had tested Naciketā variously and had found him unwavering in his passion for truth. We studied the beautiful verses describing the severe testing of the student by the teacher, the firm rejection by the student of all the alluring alternatives offered to him by way of profit, pleasure, power, and long life, and his sticking to his original boon of being granted the light of truth.

The first chapter, as we saw, concluded with this firm resolve on the part of Naciketā:

Nānyam் tasmāt naciketā vṛṇīte--'No other boon, therefore, than this shall Naciketā choose.'

Naciketā never wavered even once. He illustrates in its highest and purest form what the Gītā (II. 41) calls vyavasāyātmikā buddhi, one-pointed determination. He illustrates the type of character that is emphasized in Vedānta. This discloses a mind that seeks truth and nothing but the truth; it is prepared to face suffering, privation, and even death itself in the bargain. It found expression in a later age in Buddha's resolve on his meditation seat on the eve of his enlightenment, as vividly described by the Lalitavistara (XIX. 57):

Ihāsane śuṣyatu me śarīram tvagāsthimāṁsaṁ vilayaṁ ca yātu; aprāpya bodhiṁ bahukalpadurlabhām naivāsanāt kāyamataḥ caliṣyate—

'Let my body wither away on this seat, let skin, bone, and flesh get dissolved; Without getting enlightenment, difficult to achieve in many æons, never shall this body move from this seat.'

This, too, is the spiritual earnestness which Jesus upholds when he says (Matthew vii. 7 and 8):

'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.'

ceiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.'

The Paths of Śreya and Preya

Yama is highly pleased with Naciketā; he finds in him a fit student of Ātmavidyā, the science of the Self. With the second chapter of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, into the study of which we now enter, we are introduced to a fascinating exposition of this science, which is the science of all sciences, an exposition given by Yama to Naciketā, and by both to humanity at large. Yama begins his exposition with a pointed reference to the good life as the ethical precondition to spiritual striving and realization:

Anyat śreyo anyadutaiva preyasté te ubhe nānārthe puruṣaṁ sinītat; Tayoh śreya ādadānasya sādhurbhavati hīyate arthāt ya u preyo vṛṇīte—

The term preya means that which is pleasant, immediately attractive; the term śreya means that which conduces to true welfare, which is ultimately beneficial. Ethics and religion divide all objects and experiences into these two categories.

Even a purely materialistic ethics, which believes only in pleasure and self-interest, makes a distinction, analogous to the distinction between preya and śreya made here, between pure self-interest and enlightened self-interest, between short-sighted selfishness and far-sighted selfishness. But it is only in systems of spiritual ethics and philosophy, which believe in a non-physical spiritual reality in man, that this distinction between śreya and preya becomes significant. To all such, catering merely to the sensate man is preya, and what helps the manifestation of the spiritual man is śreya.

Preya is happiness arising from organic satisfactions, arising from the titillation of the senses. If man considers this as the be-all and end-all of life, his life will be lived at a very low level, very near the animal level; when man abandons himself to a round of sensory stimulations, he loses his independence and even surrenders his self-hood in which alone consists his humanity. This

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD—3

293

is what the Upaniṣad means when it says: hīyate arthāt ya u preyo vṛṇīte—‘But he falls away from the goal who chooses the pleasant.’

Getting stuck in a round of pleasures, man falls away from his evolutionary direction, which is greater awareness and life fulfilment. He remains a biological organism and misses his spiritual direction and goal. Preya is therefore below ethics. Ethics begins with parting from preya and entering the path of śreya; from then on, man ascends from the organic to the mental, and thence to the spiritual, dimensions of his being, liberating the value of humanness in the process, to rise, in the end, step by step, to the full stature of his true selfhood. In the preya path, therefore, the self of man is submerged in the darkness of avidyā, ignorance, spiritual blindness, as the next verse will tell us; and this darkness will begin to lift as he enters the śreya path, which will be designated, therefore, as the path of vidyā, knowledge, spiritual awareness. Preya demands freedom of the senses; śreya, on the other hand, demands freedom from the senses. All law and morality mean limitation of the sense-bound man in order to liberate the true self of him. They involve a distinction between man’s lower self and his higher self.

Referring to the condition of man under the influence of the preya idea, Plato says (‘Republic’ ix, The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. II, pp. 459–60; Jowett’s Edition):

‘Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony and sensuality, are carried down and up again as far as the mean; and in this region they move at random throughout life; but they never pass beyond into the true upper world; thither they neither look, nor do they ever find their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do they taste of pure and abiding pleasure. Like cattle, with their eyes always looking down and their heads stooping to the earth, that is, to the dining table, they fatten and feed and breed, and, in order to obtain the chief share of these delights, they kick and butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; and they kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they fill themselves with that which is not real, and the part of themselves which they fill is also neither real nor retentive.’

Śreya has two levels, namely, dharma, the good life, and amṛta, the divine immortal life. The good life is not an ultimate, not an end in itself; it must lead to the realization of the Ātman, the true Self of man, the birthless and deathless spiritual reality in him and the universe. This is the achievement of amṛta, the

second and highest level of śreya. This is again and again emphasized in Vedānta and in all the higher religions. Though ethics is not an end in itself, nor the highest end, yet, without ethics, one cannot achieve that highest end. Religions speak of spiritual realization as this highest end; and Vedānta terms it nihśreyasa, the ultimate śreya or good.

Abhyudaya and Nihśreyasa

The first stage in man's spiritual evolution is ethics, which Vedānta terms abhyudaya, welfare in the social context. At this stage, man is a producer of wealth and social welfare and an enjoyer of the delights of social man existence, in association with his fellow men. At the ethical level man takes into account not only himself but also others. Society is the venue of his ethical education; ethics has no meaning without this social reference. This social reference of the individual's effort and struggle, of his delights and satisfactions, is known as dharma in Vedānta. This is śreya in what, in modern times, has come to be known as the secular context. This śreya has reference to man as conditioned by time. This is the highest reach of Græco-Roman thought, as well as of modern western thought. It finds expression in a continuous effort to manipulate the economic and socio-political conditions of human life in order to ensure the good life for man.

But this is insufficient, says Vedānta. If carried too far, as in the modern concepts of social security and the welfare state, it will defeat its own purpose. Vedānta holds that the good life will also become the true life, only if man is approached from the within, over and above the approach to him from the without. This approach from within helps to release the energies of his innate spiritual nature and manifest his immortal divine Self within.

When his life does not rise to this second level, when he does not seek to express his deathless dimension, man becomes a problem to himself in spite of all the security and welfare built up from the outside. This is the essential spiritual message of the great world religions. It is the central theme of the Upaniṣads. Jesus expressed it when he said, 'My Kingdom is not of this world.' This truth is thus expressed in St. John (i. 17):

'For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.'

The sense-bound man with his time-bound life is not the highest excellence that man is capable of. In religion man seeks and finds something beyond the world of conditioned existence. After

experiencing the pleasure, power, and knowledge available in his sense-bound existence, man reaches after the supersensual. That is the line of his further evolution; if he does not proceed in that line, it will not be growth and evolution but stagnation and death for him; it will just be an endless repetition of his time-bound experiences of the sense world. This is called saṁsāra, the repetitive experiences of worldliness, in the technical language of Vedānta. But if he dares to break through this bondage of saṁsāra, he will achieve a timeless existence characterized by naturalness, spontaneity, and fullness of being. This is the plenitude of śreya, paramaṁ śreya, which Vedānta also calls nihśreyasa, or mokṣa, the highest freedom of the spirit. This very Upaniṣad in its last chapter will tell us later (VI. 14):

Yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā ye'sya hṛdi śritāḥ; Atha mortyo amṛto bhavati atra brahma samaśnute—

Thus dharma and amṛta—the achievement of social ethics and the experience of immortality—form the two levels of śreya. And religion as understood in Vedānta or Sānātana Dharma comprehends both. It comprehends Rājadharma, ethics of the State and Mokṣadharma, ethics of spiritual emancipation. It thus constitutes a comprehensive philosophy of life for man. Kṛṣṇa characterizes his message in the Gītā (XII. 20) as both dharmya and amṛta, conducive to social welfare and spiritual emancipation. Swami Vivekananda similarly defines his message as Ātmano mokṣārthaiṁ jagaddhitāya ca—'For the spiritual liberation of oneself and the welfare of the world.'

Every human being is bound, sinītah, by śreya and preya, says the opening verse of this second chapter of the Upaniṣad. This bondage arises from the impelling force of desire within man which makes him resort to the one or the other, according to the constitution of his mind. They lead to different ends so that if he chooses one of them he is far away from the other. The unbridled pursuit of sensate satisfactions is not the way to the realization of one's spiritual nature. By pursuing his spiritual nature man becomes sādhu, good; he becomes ethically perfect and spiritually illumined. All moral evolution is the fruit of spiritual awareness; whereas, mere physical awareness makes for self-centredness, com-

petition, and exploitation. Those who resort to preya, says the verse, miss the goal, the achievement of true freedom through the realization of the Ātman, the eternal, ever-pure Self. Such a person, says Saṅkara in his comment on this verse, is adūradarśī, short-sighted, and vimūḍha, utterly foolish.

The Yogakṣema Mood

Amplifying this idea, Yama says in the next verse, verse two:

Śreyaśca preyaśca manuṣyametaḥ tau samparītya vivinakti dhīraḥ;

Śreyo hi dhīro abhipreyaso vṛṇīte preyo mando yogakṣemāt vṛṇīte—

'Both śreya and preya approach man; the dhīra (wise man), examining the two (well), discriminates between them. The wise man verily prefers śreya to preya; but the foolish man chooses preya through love of gain and attachment.'

Man is free to choose śreya or preya; the Upaniṣad picturesquely expresses the idea by saying that each of them approaches man and tries to capture his attention and interest. Of the two, preya, which conduces to immediate profit and pleasure, is outwardly more attractive; but its inside is hollow, which time alone will reveal. Śreya, on the other hand, although it involves some initial privation, conduces to man's abiding welfare; its attractions are in the solid worth hidden in its depths, not on the surface. A little diving is necessary to reach those attractive depths. The shining shells float on the surface of the sea, says Sri Ramakrishna, but the pearls lie in its depths; the fool in his infatuation and laziness just stretches out his hands and takes the shells; but the wise man, fortified by discrimination and unafraid of the depths, dives down and secures the pearls. The wise man, exercising his discrimination, carefully examines the two by turning them upside down, tau samparītya, going round them, as the Upaniṣad puts it. Outward appearances may be deceptive; he wants to be assured that what appears is also what is; and he has the patience to wait; his hunger for truth can silence all his hunger for lesser things. He therefore chooses śreya. But the fool or the dull-witted man chooses preya. Why does he do so? Because he has no power of discrimination nor the patience to wait; he does not need these either; he wants results immediately. He is not in search of truth. What then does he seek? Yogakṣema, says the Upaniṣad; this term literally means yoga, 'acquisition' and kṣema, 'preservation'

Technically, it is used to express the entire range of man's worldly propensities, of which the two basic ones are greed and attachment. The yokakṣema mood, in its pronounced unbridled form, is the oppressive worldly mood in which, as poignantly expressed by Goethe in his Faust:

From desire I stumble to possession, And in possession languish from desire.

When, however, this yokakṣema mood functions within the framework of the ethical urge, it remains healthy and creative. But when it gets loose from its ethical moorings and becomes oppressive, it has come under the tyranny of the immediate present; all distant horizons of true well-being are then shut out. Pleasure and profit become the ruling motives; ethical and spiritual motives fade away.

If man is free to choose śreya or preya, why do the generality of people choose preya? asks Śaṅkara in his commentary on this verse. and answers:

Satyam் svāyatte, tathāpi sādhanataḥ phalataśca mandabuddhī-nāṁ durvivekarūpe satī vyāmiśrībhūte iva manuṣyam, puruṣam, etah, prāpnutah, śreyasca preyasca—

But those who do so discriminate, reject preya as trivial and choose śreya; they are prepared to pay the price of such a choice, the price of having chosen a path which is like 'walking on the edge of a razor' as Yama will tell us later on. In such a choice is found blended high intelligence and great courage, a rare combination in the human character. This the verse denotes by the term dhīra, a term which the Upaniṣads use again and again. Yama now eulogizes Naciketā in verse three for possessing such a character:

Sa tvam் priyān priyarūpāṁśca kāmān abhidyāyan naciketo atyasrākṣīh; Naitāṁṁ śṛṅkāṁ vittamayīṁ avāpto yasyāṁ majjanti bahavo manuṣyāḥ—

298 THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Thou has not gone into this way of (infatuation for) wealth in which many men get drowned.'

'Thou hast renounced, atyasrākṣīh, after due deliberation, abhidhyāyan', says Yama. Naciketā's renunciation is not the product of any temporary emotional upsurge produced by life's sorrows and defeats. It is the product of knowledge, fortified by deep deliberation, such as that which the world saw again in a later age in Buddha. To the discriminating mind, the world conjured up by the senses is a world of constant flux, riddled with contradictions; it is the same also with the perceiving ego. The heart that seeks after Reality, abiding and changeless, will be dissatisfied with the world of change and death, provided that the seeking is whole-souled and not merely intellectual and academic. Herein lies the whole difference between Vedānta and all academic philosophies. Vedānta insists that if the search for the eternal and the changeless is to come to fruition in spiritual realization, it must be backed by renunciation of the finite and the changeful. Man shall not seek God and mammon at the same time.

The way of wealth is the way of profit and pleasure. It is a mighty current in which many a bark of life, many a ship of civilization, has sunk. He who can withstand this current must be extraordinarily intelligent and strong; it is a superior type of intelligence and strength, quite unlike the intelligence and strength which ensure success in worldly life or domination over others. Yama is struck by this intelligence and strength in Naciketā—aho buddhimattā tava—'wonder of wonders, what fine intelligence is yours,' exclaims Yama, as elucidated by Saṅkara. The Gītā also sings the glory of such intelligence (V. 23.):

Śaknoti ihaiva yaḥ sodhuṃ prāk śarīravimokṣaṇāt; Kāmakrodhodbhavāṁ vegāṁ sa yuktāḥ sa sukhī naraḥ—

'He who can withstand in this very life, before the fall of the body, the flood-tide arising from lust and anger, he is the spiritually integrated one, he is the happy man.'

Vidyā and Avidyā

Yama now contrasts, in verse four, this spiritual intelligence, vidyā, with spiritual unintelligence, avidyā:

Dūram ete vipratīte viṣūcī avid yā yā ca vidyeti jñātā; Vidyābhipsinam naciketasam manye na tvā kāṁā bahavo lolupanta—

aspirant for knowledge, (since) the prospect of so much pleasure could not shake thee.'

Yama now identifies śreya with vidyā, knowledge, and preya with avidyā, ignorance. This ignorance is not the ordinary ignorance of facts and formulae but it means spiritual blindness. It is unintelligence, because it fails to take note of the most primary datum of all experience, namely the Self. Materialism commits this blunder; it submerges man in the not-Self. Even great scientists have protested gainst this materialistic folly. Says the astrophysicist R.A. Millikan (Autobiography, last chapter):

'To me a purely materialistic philosophy is the height of unintelligence.'

T. H. Huxley, the eminent scientific thinker of the nineteenth century and collaborator of Darwin, strongly repudiated materialism as a philosophy of life (Methods and Results, pp. 164-65):

'If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols....

'But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician who should mistake the x's and y's, with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.' (Italics not author's.)

Materialism confines man to the world of sensate realities and values. It is the world of darkness or unawareness, the world of finitude, change, and death—asuryā nāma te lokā andhena tamasā-vṛtā, as the Iśā Upaniṣad told us. The path of preya is the path that leads to spiritual bondage, to absorption in this finite world; it is the path which takes man away from light and life. The path of śreya, on the other hand, is the path that leads to light and life, to the infinite and the eternal. Says Saṅkara in his Vivekacūḍā-maṇi (Verse 160):

Dehohamityeva jadasya buddhih Dehe ca jīve viduṣastvaham dhīḥ; Vivekavijñānānato mahātmāno Brahmāhamityeva matiṃ saditmani—

800

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

""I am the body", thinks the dull-witted man; whereas the knowing man has his idea of selfhood in the soul within the body; but

the mahātman (the great-souled one), possessed of discrimination and realization, looks upon the eternal Ātman as his self, and thinks

"I am Brahman".

Yama's Eulogy of Naciketa

Yama considered Naciketā as a fit aspirant for vidyā because he chose śreya, because he could not be shaken by the allurements

of preya. Vidyābhipsinam naciketasaṁ manye—'I consider you,

Naciketā, an aspirant of vidyā', says Yama. Naciketā is a vidyā-bhīpsi or vidyārthi, a lover, a seeker of vidyī.

The ordinary meaning of vidyābhipsi or vidyārthi is 'student',

one who has enrolled himself in some school or college in search

of what Sri Ramakrishna characterized as 'a mere bread-winning

education'. Naciketā is not such a humdrum student, however.

He is a seeker of knowledge in every sense of the term; not a

'milker' of worldly advantages from the 'cow' of knowledge. And

the knowledge he seeks is parā vidyā, the highest knowledge, by

which tad akṣaram adhigamyate—'that Imperishable Reality is

realized', as the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (I. i. 5) expresses it. Yama

eulogizes this one-pointed love of truth in Naciketā—na tvā kāmā

bahavo lolupanta—'many an object of pleasure did not shake you'.

This is an elevating idea of education, where what is sought is

knowledge and life excellence. Even in ordinary secular education,

a student gets the best result when he aims at the silent acquisition

of knowledge in a spirit of intellectual austerity and dedication.

No education can achieve results if the student spends more hours

in the canteen than in the laboratory or the library.

Within the brief period of his stay in a college or university

he has to take in whatever the world of knowledge has to give

him, and discipline himself thoroughly so as to make that knowl-

edge grow with his life, and flower into character and vision. Educa-

tion may start with the aparā aspect of vidyā or knowledge, knowl-

edge relating to the not-Self, to the changing and perishable world

of experience; but it should not stop there, but lead the student

on to the parā aspect of vidyā, which is adhyātmavidyā, knowledge

of the Self, the changeless and immortal reality in man and the

universe. If education stops short of this higher dimension it defeats

its very purpose. Such vidyā or knowledge is nothing else but

avidyā or nescience, because it does not achieve liberation of the

human spirit. Yama refers to this in the next two verses, verses five

and six of this second chapter, as we shall see in the next lecture.

FIFTEEN

KATHA UPANISAD-4

In the last lecture, the Upaniṣad was telling us about the distinction between śreya and preya. I had occasion then to point out the ethical significance of these two terms—śreya standing for human welfare in a fundamental sense, and preya standing for self-sufficient hedonism, leading to stagnation of life at the physical level.

Through the śreya ideal, ethics redeems life from this stagnation and sets it on the road to true evolutionary advance through the increasing liberation of spiritual values embedded in the heart of life. The economic, political, and cultural fields of human life provide the earlier phase of this ethical education of man; and religion, understood as spiritual realization, provides its final phase. This is the śreya idea in its comprehensiveness, where life advances, through increasing spiritual awareness, to purer and higher joys and zests, to culminate in the bliss of total fulfilment.

Life under the preya idea can never advance beyond its elementary forms, because there is a stifling of spiritual awareness by the tyranny of the immediate present—the lure of profit and pleasure. Śreya is characterized by far-sight and foresight, whereas preya is characterized by short-sight, with the flowing stream of life arrested and stagnant. Hence the Upaniṣad identifies śreya with vidyā, knowledge, and preya with avidyā, ignorance. Both social welfare and spiritual realization are the products of far-sight and foresight which are two important characteristics of both the scientific and the Vedāntic outlooks.

The Vedāntic Concept of Education

The Upaniṣad thereafter gave us an exposition of vidyā and avidyā. Avidyā means ignorance in the sense of spiritual blindness; vidyā means knowledge in the sense of spiritual illumination. Vidyā does not mean mere secular knowledge or scholarship; nor does avidyā mean mere illiteracy and lack of information. Vedānta does include in vidyā literacy and gathering of information, and all forms of training of the mind for creative acquisition of knowledge – what is usually termed education. But it holds that if this education fails to advance the spiritual growth and development of

man, if it fails to raise him above the sensate level, it sheds its

vidyā quality and becomes avidyā; for vidyā is that which liberates

the human spirit from thraldom to the senses—yā vidyā sā vimuktiaye—and where it fails to do this it becomes avidyā, in spite of

all the intellectual knowledge and sharpness of mind gained from

that education.

The sensate man, guided by a self-sufficient hedonistic ideology,

refuses to grow into the spiritually-aware man, in spite of his

high intellectual knowledge and discipline. In spite of all the

energy and movement manifested in his life and work, the life

force has become stagnant in him; he blindly, because unaware

of the divine within, and foolishly goes round and round in the very

limited arena of the sensate world—dandramyamānālḥ pariyanti

mūdhā—as verse five of this chapter of the Upaniṣad will presently

tell us. He is content to stay in this dark valley and is afraid to

march up to the sunlit heights; by thus refusing to move forward

he makes his vidyā turn into avidyā. By stepping aside from the

main stream of evolution which leads to increasing awareness and

fulfilment, he chooses a path leading nowhere, like some of the

biological species, the insects for instance, which reached a dead-

end in organic evolution.

The Upaniṣad therefore does not condemn secular education

in itself; but it expects education to be a continuing process. The

building up of the sensate man and his ego is but the first step;

it must lead to the transcendence of this trivial finite man and

the emergence of the spiritual man endowed with clear vision,

ever-widening sympathy, and a firm grip on the evolutionary

process. Like the chick breaking the shell or the butterfly coming

out of its cocoon into the wide world of light and opportunity,

man has to break through the shell of his sensate world which had

nourished him so long, and continue his march to self-fulfilment in

the infinite expanse of the trans-sensuous world. That is the open-

ing of his third eye; that is his second birth. He then becomes

a dvija, twice-born, in the language of Vedānta.

Thus vidyā is not education in the sense of mere equipment

for bread-winning or world-gaining; it is this but also something

vastly more; it is illumination. The English word 'education' can

stand for the Vedāntic word vidyā if it includes both the aparā and

parā aspects of vidyā. But then it will cease to be mere book-

learning, mere gathering of information, mere control and manip-

KAṬHA UPANIṢAD—4

303

ulation of i.e external world; it will mean setting man on the

road to spiritual growth, development, and realization by an ever-

increasing discipline and control of the given sense-bound man.

Referring to the scientific approach of India to this spiritual

education of man, Swami Vivekananda said in his famous speech

at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893 (Complete Works,

Vol. 1, Eleventh Edition, p. 13):

'The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories.

If there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, he

wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him

which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful universal Soul, he

will gu to Him direct. He must see Him, and that alone can des-

troy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the

soul. about God, is: "I have seen the soul; I have seen God." And

that is the only condition of perfection. The Hindu religion does

not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine

or dugma, but in realizing—not in believing. but in being and

becoming.'

The Blind Leading the Blind

The self-sufficient sensate man under the control of the preya

idea moves in the valley of avidyā; he is blissfully unaware of his

higher spiritual dimension. In the limited sensate world in which

he lives and moves he naturally thinks too much of himself, of his

power and possessions. In the next two verses, verses five and

six, which we shall now study, Yama tells Naciketā about this

avidyā and its bitter fruits:

Avidyāyāmantare vartamānāḥ

svayaṁ dhīrāḥ paṇditam் manyamānāḥ;

Dandramyamānāḥ pariyanti mūḍhā

andhenaivā mūgamānā yathāndhāḥ—

Na sāṁparāyaḥ pratibhāti bālam

pramādyantam் vittamohena mūḍham;

Ayaṁ loko nāsti para iti māni

punah punarvaśamāpadyate me—

Avidyā or spiritual blindness is characterized by absence of discrimination, with or without learning or scholarship. If it is with learning, it becomes a greater tragedy. For learning without inner illumination makes for greater pride and vanity, resulting in increased spiritual blindness. This is childish foolishness, says Yama; it is learned ignorance. Living in the midst of such ignorance, man yet considers himself learned and wise; he is full of life and movement; but it is a staggering movement, with mind clouded and steps unsteady. And Yama compares his wisdom and his movement to a blind man leading another blind man—with both falling into the ditch!

The Delusion of Wealth

The finite sense-world has become a prison to him instead of a field in which to cultivate spiritual awareness. So imprisoned, he does not see anything beyond; nor does he care to see either, for he has much at stake in that sense-world; its wealth, power, and pleasure hold him in thrall. Conditioned by time as he is, and also by the world which possesses him, and, fully satisfied with his state, he does not get even a glimpse of the unconditioned and timeless dimension of his being. He has wealth which can purchase the pleasures of the sense-world; and starting with possessing wealth and pleasure, he ends up in being possessed by them; and the power of wealth deludes him into thinking that whatever cannot be purchased with it is not worthwhile or true. He firmly believes that pursuits other than profit, power, and pleasure are illusory. But he is a deluded child, says Yama; absorbed in his attractive toys of variegated colours and various types, he does not seek anything else. Worldliness has entered into him and filled him, like water filling a boat; his spiritual freedom and free movement are lost, just like the free mobility of that boat, and it spells his spiritual death.

Sri Ramakrishna tells the parable of the frog to illustrate the delusion arising from wealth: A frog lived in a hole by the wayside. One day he came across a shining silver rupee on the road; he was fascinated by it and took it to his hole. With the possession of the rupee, he became a different frog. One day, an elephant chanced to pass by his hole. The frog became furious and thought to himself how impudent it was of the elephant to pass by his hole. He quickly came out of the hole and gave vent to his anger with a few kicks at the back of the elephant's leg.

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Having thus demonstrated his importance, he went back to his hole and gazed at his rupee. All the while, the elephant was blissfully unaware of the very existence of the frog.

The Tyranny of the Sensate

This tyranny of the sensate may over-power a whole civilization, and not merely individual men and women. It is particularly evident in modern western civilization, to which Yama's sentiments in this verse aptly apply. Its inner spiritual quality and strength are smothered by its sensate Weltanschauung or world-view. In the words of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan (Eastern Religions and Western Thought, p. 383):

'The world of nations seems to be like a nursery full of perverse, bumptious, ill-tempered children, nagging one another and making a display of their toys of earthly possessions, thrilled by mere size.'

Without overcoming this foolish delusion arising from the possession of material wealth, man will not taste immortality; he will only inflate his ego and increase his tension and sorrow; he will only experience death again and again: punaḥ punarvasamāpadyate me-'they come into my clutches again and again', says Yama, the god of death. The death of the body is not the only form of death; nor is it so serious for a being so high in the scale of evolution as man; but spiritual death is a more serious matter. Absence of spiritual awareness while living in the body leads to the body becoming not an instrument of evolution but a tomb. This is great tragedy indeed!

True Humanness

The self of man is separate from his body. This is the foundation of all moral and spiritual life; this truth is proclaimed by every step that man takes in the discipline and control of his body and its appetites. The animal identifies itself fully with the body; it cannot therefore control its appetites. But with man begins the process of disengaging the self from this wrong identification as the new dimension of self-awareness lights up his horizon of experience; experience which, in the animal, had been confined only to the world of the not-self. The body, in fact the entire psycho-physical organism, slowly reveals itself to human consciousness not as the self but as the instrument of the self, the finest instrument

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that nature has designed to help in the manifestation of the true self—brahmāvalokadhiṣaṇam—as the Bhāgaratam (XI. i. x. 28) puts it. But in the early stages of man's development this distinction is not very clear because of the pressure of the animal legacy, because of the influence of the 'primeval slime' of his early evolutionary origins. But man soon begins gradually to overcome this legacy; and, in and through that struggle, he achieves true humanness. Says Swami Vivekananda in his lecture on 'The Ātman' (Complete Works, Vol. II, Ninth Edition, p. 250):

'No books, no scriptures, no science can ever imagine the glory of the Self that appears as man, the most glorious God that ever was, the only God that ever existed, exists, or ever will exist.'

Lower Self and Higher Self

This struggle to achieve true humanness brings to light in man, for the first time in evolution, two natures, an outer physical one and an inner spiritual one; and, correspondingly, it also brings to light two selves in him, a lower self consisting of his physo-physical organism identified with outer nature, and a higher self stripped of all non-spiritual elements.

Reality is constituted of these two natures—the not-self which is the lower nature, and the self which is the higher nature. Says God as Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā (VII. 4-6):

Bhūmirāpo'nalo vāyuḥ khaṅ mano buddhireva ca;

Ahaṅkāra itīyaṁ me bhinna prakṛtiraṣṭadhā—

Apareyam itas tvanyāṁ prakṛtiṁ viddhi me parāṁ;

Jīvabhūtāṁ mahābāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat—

Etat yonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇityupadhāraya;

Ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavah pralayastathā—

Prakṛtidvayadvāreṇa sarvajñā īśvaraḥ jagataḥ kāraṇam—'The Supreme all-knowing Lord, in his twofold nature, is the cause of the universe', comments Śaṅkara on the last of the above verses.

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The Vedāntic View of Evolution

This parā prakṛti, higher Nature, in the form of the indwelling Self, is submerged in the aparā prakṛti, lower nature, in the form of the material world. Evolution, says Vedānta, is the progressive manifestation of the Self through the transformation it effects in the material mass around. The whole process becomes self-aware only in man, that too only in the thinking man endowed with moral awareness. From now on evolution becomes, according to Sir Julian Huxley, less and less organic and more and more psycho-social and cultural. Evolution from now on becomes a spiritual pilgrimage.

It is at this stage that man becomes dimly aware of something within him which is not essentially affected by the fortunes of his physical instrument, the body, or its physical environment, outer nature. But the body is affected by 'the sixfold waves of change' as Vedānta expresses it, namely, birth, existence, growth, transformation, decay, and destruction; this is also true of the entire world of outer nature. These belong to the category of the changeful; they are under the realm of 'death', a realm which extends not only to the body of man but also to his mind and ego within, as also to the entire range of celestial entities outside. They are conditioned by time because they are subject to causality; they are hetuprabhāvā, within the chain of cause and effect, as Buddha describes them. The changeless and the immortal cannot be sought there. Yama will tell us later on, in the fourth chapter: dhruvam adhruveṣu iha na prārthayante—the wise do not seek the eternal in this world of the non-eternal'. If there is an eternal dimension to reality, it has primarily to be sought in the 'within' and not in the 'without'. Organic evolution has disclosed the faint glimmerings of such a mystery in the inner world of man; not merely disclosed the mystery but also provided the psycho-physical equipment capable of solving that mystery. The fourth chapter of this very Upaniṣad will tell us in clear and firm language the nature of this mystery and the technical know-how of its solution.

Says Swami Vivekananda in his lecture on 'The Necessity of Religion' delivered in London (Complete Works, Vol II, Fifth Edition, p. 65):

'Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external. Not only does it com-

prise the laws that govern the particles of matter outside us and

in our bodies, but also the more subtle nature within, which is,

in fact, the motive power governing the external. It is good and

very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer

our internal nature. It is grand and good to know the laws that

govern the stars and planets; it is infinitely grander and better to

know the laws that govern the passions, the feelings, the will, of

mankind. This conquering of the inner man, understanding the

secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind,

and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion.'

The Self of Man Indestructible

If the body is but an instrument of the self, its destruction or

dissolution does not mean the destruction or dissolution of the

self. This truth does not shine in the heart of the thoughtless man

who is deluded by his wealth, says Yama: na sāmpparāyah prati-

bhāti bālam. Sāṃparāya refers to the self of man being essentially

independent of his gross physical body. The term 'body' includes

in Vedānta not only the gross physical body, the sthūlaśarīra, but

also the subtle mental body, the sūkṣmaśarīra or liṅgaśarīra, which

is equivalent to the 'soul' in western thought, and the still more

subtle causal body, the kāraṇaśarīra. Death means only the shuff-

ling off of the gross physical body.

The inadequacies of aparā vidyā, lower knowledge, knowledge

of the environing world of change and death, led the Indian mind

to the search after parā vidyā, higher knowledge, knowledge of

the imperishable and the immortal Self. The inadequacy of aparā

vidyā is inherent in its relativity and inconclusiveness; this in-

adequacy reveals itself also in its capacity for restricting and des-

troying the spiritual freedom of man and for increasing tension

and sorrow in him.

'All Expansion Is Life; All Contraction Is Death'

The ignorant man eats well, digests well, and sleeps peacefully.

He goes to school and college, acquires knowledge of the world

and becomes a civilized knowing man; he feels a sense of expansion

coming over him and greater freedom within. He now settles down

to enjoy his civilized existence; he stifles his longing to continue

the evolutionary march; the creative fires die out in him. The

spiritual heights remain untrod and unconquered. He becomes

stagnant at the sensate level.

Then begins his life of tension and sorrow. His digestion

suffers and his sleep is impaired. He becomes a prey to many

ailments whose origins lie in the non-physical part of his being,

in his spiritual malnutrition, in the damming of his life current.

He becomes a problem to himself, in the words of Schopenhauer,

and then a problem to others. His knowledge fails to deal with his

problem. This makes him cast a longing glance at the bliss of the

ignorant man. This nostalgia for the care-free primitive state is

a recurring phenomenon in high civilizations of a frankly secular

character. Absence of purpose, ennui, and frustration, which are

the final fruits of such a civilization, reveal the inadequacies of

the Weltanschauung of that civilization. The Roman civilization

experienced it in ancient times, and modern western civilization is

experiencing it today. Says Bertrand Russell of the latter (Impact

of Science on Society, p. 121):

'Unless men increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge,

increase of knowledge will be increase of sorrow.'

The Upaniṣads knew of this malady of man, of this malady

of the increase of knowledge of the aparā vidyā kind leading to

much sorrow and tension. Bertrand Russell's remark sounds so

akin in language and sentiment to the remark of truth-seeking

Nārada to sage Sanatkumāra (Chāndogya Upaniṣad, VII. i. 3).

Nārada's dissatisfaction with aparā vidyā and its fruits led him to

an earnest search for parā vidyā, which is the one theme of all

the Upaniṣads. Therein was achieved the flowering of knowledge

into wisdom and the resolution of all actual and possible tension

and sorrow into the peace and bliss of the Ātman, the immortal

Self of man. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (II. iv. 2) speaks of

Maitreyī spurning wealth when Yājñavalkya, her husband, tells

her unequivocally that wealth can never be the means to im-

mortality, amṛtatvasya tu na āśā asti vittena, but that it is the

means to ensure for man only social security and welfare. Maitreyī,

whose heart was set on the eternal and the immortal, spurned the

offer of wealth and asked her husband for education in parā vidyā.

Modern Knowledge and Sri Ramakrishna's Wisdom

This limitation of aparā vidyā, this inadequacy of positivistic

knowledge, and the search for wisdom in parā vidyā, is the deep-

felt urge in the heart of man in the modern age. This is what invests

the life of Sri Ramakrishna with compelling fascination to think-

ing minds in West and East. For Sri Ramakrishna was the very

embodiment of this parā vidyā; and he went to it directly without

going through aparā vidyā. He did not go to school, nor did he

8 10

THE MESSAGE OF THE UPANIṢADS

acquire book-learning. Yet from the young age of nineteen he subjected himself for seventeen years to an education so thorough and complete, and the remaining thirteen years of his life to the untiring dissemination of his wisdom among seeking men and women, that his life became a blazing example of parā vidyā, and a demonstration of the Upaniṣadic truth that parā vidyā is the consummation and fulfilment of all forms of aparā vidyā, that brahmavidyā is sarvavidyāpratiṣṭhā. In his lecture on 'The Sages of India' delivered in Madras in 1897, Swami Vivekananda referred in moving words to this challenging uniqueness of his Master, Sri Ramakrishna (Complete Works, Vol. III, Eighth Edition, pp. 267-68):

"The time was ripe for one to be born who in one body would have the brilliant intellect of Śaṅkara and the wonderfully expansive, infinite heart of Caitanya; one who would see in every sect the same spirit working, the same God; one who would see God in every being, one whose heart would weep for the poor, for the weak, for the outcast, for the downtrodden, for every one in this world, inside India or outside India; and at the same time whose grand brilliant intellect would conceive of such noble thoughts as would harmonize all conflicting sects, not only in India but outside of India, and bring a marvellous harmony, the universal religion of head and heart, into existence. Such a man was born, and I had the good fortune to sit at his feet for years. The time was ripe, it was necessary that such a man should be born, and he came; and the most wonderful part of it was that his life's work was just near a city which was full of western thought, a city which had run mad after these occidental ideas, a city which had become more Europeanized than any other city in India. There he lived, without any book-learning whatsoever; this great intellect never learnt even to write his own name, but the most brilliant graduates of our university found in him an intellectual giant. He was a strange man, this Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.'

M, the author of the monumental work The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1947, p. 2) mentions in his book his amazement at hearing, during his first visit to Sri Ramakrishna, that the Master had no book-learning whatsoever.

'When they (M. and his friend Sidhu) reached Sri Rama-krishna's door again, they found it shut, and Brinde, the maid, standing outside. M., who had been trained in English manners and would not enter a room without permission, asked her. "Is the holy man in?" Brinde replied, "Yes, he is in the room."

M: "How long has he lived here?"

Brinde: "Oh, he has been here a long time."

M: "Does he read many books?"

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311

Brinde: "Books? Oh, dear no! They're all on his tongue."

'M. had just finished his studies in college. It amazed him

to hear that Sri Ramakrishna read no books....

'On his way home, M. began to wonder: "Who is this serene-

looking man who is drawing me back to him? Is it possible for

a man to be great without being a scholar? How wonderful it is.

I should like to see him again."

Wisdom versus Scholarship

Thus neither wealth nor secular education by themselves can

lead man to fulfilment. Without spiritual discipline in the light

of parā vidyā man will ever remain incomplete and divided, and

a prey to inner and outer tensions. Atmajñānavihīnā mūḍhā te

pacyante narakamanekam—‘Fools are they who are bereft of the

knowledge of the divine Self within; they pass through hellish

experiences of diverse sorts', says Saṅkara in his Mohamudgara.

The following parable, which was dear to Sri Ramakrishna, brings

out the inadequacy of mere scholarship and the significance of

this fundamental spiritual education of man (The Gospel of Sri

Ramakrishna, p. 341):

'Once several men were crossing the Ganges in a boat. One

of them, a puṇḍit (scholar), was making a great display of his erudi-

tion, saying that he had studied various books—the Vedas, the

Vedānta, and the six systems of philosophy. He asked a fellow

passenger, "Do you know the Vedānta?" "No, revered Sir." "The

Sāṅkhya and the Pātañjala?" "No, revered Sir." "Have you

read no philosophy whatever?" "No, revered Sir." The puṇ-

ḍit was talking in this vain way and the passenger sitting in silence,

when a great storm arose and the boat was about to sink. The

passenger said to the puṇḍit, "Sir, can you swim?" "No," replied

the puṇḍit. The passenger said, "I don't know the Sāṅkhya or

the Pātañjala, but I can swim".

Spiritual knowledge helps us to swim across the sea of the

world; those who are bereft of this knowledge and are deluded

by wealth, they die, not knowing how to swim across the sea of

the world. 'They fall again and again into my clutches', says

Yama, the god of death. This tragedy can be averted by man con-

tinuing his education from aparā to parā vidyā, from the knowledge

of the perishable not-Self to the realization of the imperishable

Self. And Yama introduces this theme of the Self in the verses

to follow, which we shall take up in the next lecture.

SIXTEEN

KATHA UPANISAD-5

In the last lecture the Upaniṣad told us that the view of man as revealed by sense-knowledge is highly limited, and that such a view betokens an immature mind. Men of childish intellect can-not fathom the transcendent depths that lie behind the visible man, the deep mystery within him that is suggested even by his eyes. The sensate man is in the grip of death; as we peer into him, we begin to get what Wordsworth termed 'intimations of immortality'. This peering behind the physically-conditioned persona-lity is what this Upaniṣad is engaged in, for which Naciketā's ques-tion to Yama in the first chapter provided a starting point: 'When this (visible) man dies there is this doubt among men: some say that he exists; some (others) say that he does not exist; this I should like to know, being taught by you. Of the boons this is my third boon.'

Science and the Non-physical Aspects of Experience

In verse six of chapter two which we studied in the last lec-ture, Yama introduced us to the truth of the survival of the hu-man personality at the time of physical death; this truth is not given to man by the physical sciences with their very limited fields of investigation. But when the field of investigation is shifted to the non-physical aspects of experience, science comes across this truth of survival which is the counterpart of the truth of the con-servation of energy in the physical world. Science itself knows no limitation of fields of study. To quote Eddington (The Philos-ophy of Physical Science, p. 187):

'If science is the study of the rational correlation of experience, the endeavour of the scientific philosopher must be to extend this rational correlation from a limited field of experience to the whole of experience. His task is to provide a general philosophy which a scientist can accept without throwing over his scientific beliefs.'

When this extension is made, the scientific philosopher will not be called upon to throw over his scientific beliefs; but he will certainly be required to throw over his unscientific prejudices; and materialism is one such prejudice. When this is shed, man is revealed in his true form. That man is nothing but a body is the view of him from the 'without' of things; but when viewed from